The recipient of the Scottish Mountaineering Trust (SMT) 60th anniversary award was announced at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival on Saturday (26th November 2022), with the ambitious ‘It’s Up to Us’ campaign scooping the £100,000 Diamond Grant. The winning application comes from an exciting new partnership between the Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland (OATS) and Mountaineering Scotland. It aims to develop a sustainable long term funding model that will change the perceptions of the public, Government and agencies to ensure that hill path repair and habitat restoration is recognised for its social, economic and environmental benefits. The campaign will start…

Recent snowfall in the hills means a standby avalanche forecast service will be provided from now on for the Lochaber and the North Cairngorms areas. The Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) will work with Met Office meteorologists to monitor future weather patterns. When significant blanket snow cover is likely to be present in the mountains SAIS avalanche forecasters will carry out field observations and produce public avalanche hazard reports. Lochaber reports are likely to be a good reference for the western highland ranges and Northern Cairngorms reports for the eastern highland ranges. Full daily avalanche forecasts for the 6 mountain…

Northwest Highlands athlete pushes himself to the limit to raise funds for the Martin Moran Foundation… To climb a Munro (a Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet high) is a major achievement for most of us.  But Lochcarron’s Robin Downie did ten times more than that in less than a day – he recently completed the inaugural Martin Moran Round by climbing almost 30,000 feet in 20 hours, 51 minutes, covering a distance of 86km.  To put what he did in perspective, that’s the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest and running two marathons, over some of the most rugged and remote mountains…