TACit Tables

Corbett Tops and Corbetteers

Alan Dawson and Dave Hewitt

TACit Tables Complete, up-to-date lists of hills

To obtain a copy of the Corbett Tops and Corbetteers booklet, please contact the author via email to rhb@rhb.org.uk.

-- Corbett Tops and Corbetteers --

Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Rooke Corbett, this long awaited booklet focuses on the Scottish hill category known as Corbetts - summits of between 914m (2999ft) and 762m (2500ft) in height with an all-round drop of 152m (500ft). The full set of 219 Corbetts is listed - fine hills such as Beinn Trilleachan, Baosbheinn and Arkle - but that is not the half of it. Also here, with heights and grid references, are the subsidiary Corbett Tops - summits in the same height range but with between 152m and 30m of drop. There are 450 of these, with 185 attached to Corbetts (for example Carlin's Cairn beside Corserine, Beinn Nuis on Arran and Streap Comhlaidh near Glen Finnan), and 265 outlying summits of Munros (for example Ptarmigan beside Ben Lomond, Creag an Duine on Seana Bhraigh and Bidein Druim nam Ramh on Skye).

Complementing Alan Dawson's hill data, Dave Hewitt provides extensive detail on the Corbetteers - those 114 people thus far known to have completed a full round of Corbetts. Where they started, where they finished, plus detail on notable incidents during their rounds.

Also included is the first published list of the latest Scottish Council Tops, - the highest points of all 32 local authorities in Scotland

TACit Tables: Corbett Tops and Corbetteers

First published July 1999 by TACit Press
138 West Stirling Street, Alva, Clackmannanshire FK12 5EN

Printed by: Clydeside Press, 37 High Street, Glasgow Cross, Glasgow G1 ILX

Acknowledgements

Particular thanks are due to Clem Clements and David Purchase for numerous helpful comments on the draft versions of the tables. The series editor would like to thank the many people who have helped in compiling the Corbetteer section. Acknowledgements are due to all listed there, as well as to: John Adams, Gordon Adshead, Roger Boswell, Irvine Butterfield, Jim Cosgrove, Chris Crocker, Ken Crocket, Jill Dodgson, Ronald Dow, David Gordon, Elizabeth Hay, Ken Hay, the late Ross Higgins, Chris Huntley, Terry Isles, John Llewellyn, Dane Love, Andy Moffat, Stewart Moulton, Lorraine Nicholson, Dave Purser, Walter Riley, Jim Seaton, Richard Shirreffs, Ken Stewart, Keith Treacher and Richard Webb. Also to the staff at the University of Glasgow Map Library and the National Library of Scotland Manuscript Department, plus the two SMC Honorary Librarians in post during the period of research: Robin Chalmers and Ian Angell. Thanks also to Tommy Kayes and all at Clydeside Press. Apologies to anyone else who supplied advice or information, but who is omitted here.

'A list of summits and 'tops' on Munro lines for mountains between 2,500 and 3,000 feet would be a much larger and more troublesome compilation, and [...] such a list would hardly serve any useful purpose.'

John Dow, Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, April 1953

Corbett Tops and Corbetteers

About TACit Tables

TACit Tables aim to provide walkers with definitive, highly accurate, easily affordable, up-to-date lists of British and Irish hills. One unique feature of this series of booklets is that the height of each hill is given in both absolute and relative terms: as well as the height above sea level, the lists show the drop from each hill, ie the amount the hill rises above the surrounding land.

All the heights, drops and grid references in TACit Tables are obtained from the most recently available large-scale maps. The tables provide precise measurements of the location and significance of the summits, but convey nothing about distance, topography, terrain or other characteristics of the hills. Maps provide much of this detail, and the tables are intended to be used alongside a map. No attempt is made to suggest routes or starting points for walks.

Details of all current titles in the TACit Tables series are given on the inside back cover.

About the Corbetts

A Corbett is a Scottish hill between 2500 and 2999 feet high (762 to 914 metres) with a drop of at least 500 feet all round (152.4 metres). The list of hills in this category was originally compiled by John Rooke Corbett between the wars and has been published in Munro's Tables1 since 1953. (It was first published in the 1952 Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal.) The original total of 219 Corbetts was reduced to 217 in 1974 (when Beinn a'Chlaidheimh and Ruadh Stac Mor were promoted to Munros), then rose to 223 in 1981 (17 promotions and 11 deletions), falling to 222 in 1984 (two promotions and three deletions). The most recent edition of Munro's Tables (1997) lists 220 Corbetts, though only 219 qualify as such (Sgurr a'Bhac Chaolais and Buidhe Bheinn in Section 10A are both 885m, but the drop between them is less than 500 feet). Although Corbett listings are readily available elsewhere2, all Corbett details are included in this booklet as they are a subset of the Corbett Tops and provide invaluable reference points for locating many of the Tops.

About the Corbett Tops

A Corbett Top is a Scottish hill between 2500 and 2999 feet high with a drop of at least 30 metres all round (98.4 feet). The 669 Corbett Tops therefore include all the Corbetts, just as the Munro Tops include the Munros. However, the term 'Munro Tops' is nowadays usually taken to mean 'Munro Tops that are not Munros', and similar usage will probably come to be applied to the Corbett Tops.

Now that the Grahams3 (2000-2499 feet) are reasonably well established, having been accepted by the Scottish Mountaineering Club and included in the 1997 edition of Munro's Tables, the Corbett Tops fill the next most obvious gap in the portfolio of Scottish hills. The attitude of many hillwalkers is probably more amenable to Corbett Tops now than it was ten or twenty years ago. Sooner or later a table of Corbett Tops was bound to be published, and it is best done thoroughly and accurately.

Although this booklet includes the first list of Corbett Tops to be readily available, it is by no means the first list of 2500-foot Scottish hills to go beyond the Corbetts:

• In 1954 William McKnight Docharty privately published A Selection of Some 900 British and Irish Mountain Tops, which, together with its supplements published in 1962, included many of the Corbett Tops. These works are far more than lists, as the three volumes contain numerous illustrations and descriptions of the hills.
• In the early 1980s Dane Love compiled a list of 2322 British summits over 2000 feet with 100 feet of reascent on all sides, which included most of the Corbett Tops as well as numerous lower tops. This work was never published, although, like Docharty's, it was extended to include substantial additional information about the hills.
• In 1989 Eric Yeaman produced Handbook of the Scottish Hills, which listed all Scottish hills with 100m drop (81 of which are Corbett Tops), plus other hills 5km from any higher summit.
• In 1997 John Kirk finished compiling 'The Big Mountain List' of 'all 4538 mountains, hills, lumps and bumps' over 500m high with 20m drop, covering the mainland and islands of Britain (3605 summits in Scotland). This massive unpublished work includes all the Corbett Tops, all the Graham Tops (2000-2499 feet with 30m drop), and numerous other tops for which a suitable name has yet to be invented. The five manuscript volumes of Kirk's Tables, including various regional listings, run to over 350 A4 pages.

Other unpublished lists have been compiled by Irvine Butterfield, Clem Clements, Jon Leckie and John Leeding. The list published in this booklet was compiled independently, without reference to any previous work, though Kirk's tables provided useful verification that no eligible summits had been omitted.

Not all hillwalkers will be enthusiastic about the concept of Corbett Tops. Some may even resent the existence of another table of hills. Yet it is simply a set of newly available information for anyone interested to use as they wish. There is of course no need for anyone to climb any of these hills against their will, so it is difficult to pin down practical grounds for disapproval or objection. It is however easy to foresee potential advantages that may arise from publication of the Corbett Tops:

• It may encourage hillwalkers to extend and vary routes on Corbetts and Munros, instead of following a standard route. This should help relieve pressure on popular paths, and allow more walkers the satisfaction of planning and following their own route rather than following guidebook instructions.
• It may annoy anyone presumptuous enough to think they have climbed all the Scottish hills.
• It helps to demonstrate that there is an endless supply of hills in Scotland. Despite common perceptions about the hills being over-used and overcrowded, there are relatively few popular Scottish hills, with a vast number rarely visited by walkers.
• It opens up new horizons for the select band of enthusiasts who are running out of new hills to climb and may be seeking a fresh challenge and sense of purpose.

About the List

The total of 669 Corbett Tops comprises three classes of hill between 2500 and 2999 feet high:

The different classes are indicated in the tables by the code C, CTC or CTM in the first column of each entry. Those Tops located between a Corbett and a Munro are judged to be connected to whichever hill has a higher intervening col. For example, Clach Glas on Skye is located between the Munro Bla Bheinn and the Corbett Garbh-bheinn. It is classed as a CTM because the Bla Bheinn col is the higher of the two. In other words, the drop from the summit of Clach Glas is less to the Bla Bheinn col than to the Garbh-bheinn col.

The layout of the tables also highlights the broader distinction between Corbetts and Tops, as the names of Tops are indented beneath the name of the relevant Corbett or Munro. Full details are given of all Corbetts, but for Munros only the name is listed (in italics).

Obvious groups of hills are kept together, and within each group the Corbetts and Tops are listed in order of relative height (drop), so the more prominent summits are shown first. Information is laid out in the following columns:

Class

This is either C, CTC or CTM as defined above, making it easy to identify at a glance the three different categories of Corbett Top.

Section

Hills are grouped into the geographical regions shown below, with each region subdivided into sections. Region and section numbers are the same as in other TACit Tables, notably The Murdos and The Grahams and the New Donalds, except for regions 5, 7, and 8, which have each been subdivided into west (5A, 7A, 8A) and east (5B, 7B, 8B) sections. The missing regions (22, 23, 25, 26) are the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands, St Kilda and the central belt, where there are no hills over 2500 feet.

Regions of Scotland

Metres

This column gives the height of the hill above sea level in metres. This is usually taken from the largest scale metric map of the area published by the Ordnance Survey, which may be at 1:10000, 1:25000 or 1:50000. Spot heights on 1:50000 maps are not generally as accurate as those on larger scale maps, though some heights are updated as new editions are published. Where differing heights for the same point are given on different maps, the following order of precedence is generally used: 1:10000; 1:25000; 1:50000.

Feet

The height in feet is arrived at in all cases by multiplying the metric figure by 3.2808 and rounding up or down to the nearest foot (but see notes 24 and 70 on Leathad an Taobhain and Rois-Bheinn).

Name

Where possible, names are taken from the relevant 1:50000 map. If a hill is not named on this then the name is taken from a larger scale map. Where a hill has a general name and a summit name, the general name is given in the main list, as this tends to be more commonly used, with the summit name referred to in the Notes section. As well as notes for specific summits, the ° symbol after a hill name means the height is taken as that of the contour ring, as no spot height is given on any map.

Map

This column gives the number(s) of the Ordnance Survey Landranger 1:50000 map(s) on which the summit of the hill is located.

Grid Reference

The grid reference pinpoints the location of the summit of the hill to within 100 metres. All grid references have been double-checked for accuracy on 1:10000 maps.

Drop

This column refers to the relative height of the hill. It shows the height difference in metres between the summit and the col connecting the hill to the next higher summit. For example, the drop from Ben Ledi is given as 528, which means that anyone on the top of Ben Ledi would have to descend for a minimum of 528m before being able to reach a higher summit. Other TACit Tables show two figures for some summits with drops over 150m (calculated by two different methods), but this practice has been dropped for this booklet, as in most cases both methods give the same result.

The drop figures offer an indication of how much descent and reascent is likely to be involved in climbing two or more hills together, but the figures always refer to the minimum possible descent - if the terrain is uneven or there are intervening minor summits then the actual descent on the ground will be greater. A map or knowledge of the route is required for this level of detail. The letter c before the drop figure means there is no spot height for the connecting col shown on any metric map, so the drop is estimated from the position of contour lines. It is likely to be accurate to within two or three metres.

Date

This column is left blank for entering the date of ascent; a better aid to memory than a simple tick.

Corbetts and Corbett Tops

Hills in Scotland between 2500 and 2999 feet high with a drop of at least 30 metres on all sides

Region 1 Firth of Clyde to Strath Tay

Notes

Horizontal distance is referred to in the form '100 metres', as distinct from '100m' for vertical height.

^o Height is taken as that of the contour ring, as no spot height is shown on any map.

1. Munro's Tables and Other Tables of Lower Hills, 1997 edition revised and edited by Derek Bearhop (Scottish Mountaineering Trust, 1997).
2. For example, see The Corbetts and Other Scottish Hills, edited by Scott Johnstone, Hamish Brown and Donald Bennet (Scottish Mountaineering Trust, 1990) and Climbing the Corbetts by Hamish Brown (Gollancz, 1988).
3. See The Grahams and the New Donalds, second edition, by Alan Dawson and Dave Hewitt (TACit Press, 1999).
4. Beinn Each, Sron a'Choire Chnapanich: First classed as Corbetts in the 1984 edition of Munro's Tables.
5. Ceann na Baintighearna: Also known as Stob Fear-tomhais. This name was invented by the SMC, as strictly speaking Ceann na Baintighearna refers to the northern summit of the hill.
6. Beinn a'Choin: Final Corbett in Craig Caldwell's 377-day round of Munros and Corbetts, 25/2/86.
7. Stob Coire Creagach: Name invented by the SMC, as the name previously used - Binnein an Fhidhleir - applies to the west top, which is 6m lower.
8. The Cobbler: The most awkward Corbett summit, requiring a little crawling and easy but exposed scrambling to reach the highest point.
9. The Cobbler South Peak, A'Chioch, Clach Glas, Bidein Druim nam Ramh, Knight's Peak: These summits require difficult scrambling or moderate rock climbing.
10. Beinn Chuirn: Working gold mine in the eastern slopes.

To obtain a copy of the Corbett Tops and Corbetteers booklet, please contact the author via email to rhb@rhb.org.uk.