As wintry conditions develop on the hills, we put questions from Walkhighlands users to Scottish Avalanche Information Service co-ordinator and senior forecaster for the Cairngorms, Mark Diggins. 1. How many avalanches are there in Scotland a year involving walkers and what are the most common causes? During last winter 2019/20, 27 avalanches were human triggered – this basically means that they were set off by people who were traveling in avalanche start zones in avalanche terrain (see diagram below) walkers are equally susceptible in terms of entering this type of terrain when following paths that are covered by snow. For…

A new book by Kerri Andrews, Wanderers examines the history of female walking by looking at ten women who, over the past three hundred years, have found walking essential to their lives.  In a series of intimate portraits, Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson’s daughter Elizabeth Carter – who desired nothing more than to be taken for a vagabond in the wilds of southern England – to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed. For each, walking was integral, whether it was rambling for miles across the Highlands, like Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, or pacing novels into being, as Virginia…