UKHillwalking recently
published an article on the Trimble survey of the highest mountain in Y Berwyn;
Craig Berwyn. The article and a link to
it on the UKHillwalking website appear below.
Thanks to Alan Dawson for
photos and details on Bernard Wright, Peter Collins for details relating to
Bernard Wright and Aled Williams for suggesting and having input in to the
article.
In Search of the 'Lost' Welsh Mountain
Through painstakingly re-measuring some of Britain's borderline summits,
independent surveyors G&J Surveys have been responsible for elevating mere
hills to mountain status, and dethroning Munros. G&J's Myrddyn
Phillips describes his recent work on the highest point of the Berwyns, a mystery mountain
that's never before been given an accurate height, and one particularly close
to his heart.
Over 25 years ago a party of 20 were walking on the Berwyn
mountains in Mid Wales. The party was being led by Bernard Wright, a
former motor oils scientist from Tarvin in Cheshire. As they headed up to
the main Berwyn ridge they were confronted by a peak that was absent from their
Ordnance Survey maps.
.jpg) |
| The pointed summit of Craig Berwyn (left) and nearby Cadair Berwyn |
Bernard and his friends were standing beside the trig pillar on Cadair
Berwyn looking south toward Moel Sych. Both hills nowadays are given the
same metric height of 827m. In Bernard's day the map had Moel
Sych at 2713ft, and Cadair Berwyn at 2712ft. But something was wrong.
The map indicated that these two summits were the highest in the Berwyn, but
between the two was another hill, a hill that looked higher, but was not shown
as such on any map.
"Between what the map said were
the highest two summits in the Berwyn was another, higher hill"
The group visited the unknown and seemingly 'non-existent' hill and
Bernard sat on its highest rock and peered out over the top of Cadair Berwyn
and Moel Sych. This hill was definitely higher, but why wasn’t it shown as such
on the map? As the friends descended, they chatted about the hill and
someone proposed that they should name it Berwyn Wright. A Welsh
friend in the party suggested the name Craig Uchaf (...highest), and
although an appropriate name it has never caught on.
More recent research I conducted for the ‘Y Pedwarau’ hill list (see UKH article here) revealed that the peak is known
to some of the local farmers and shepherds as Craig Berwyn, a name that already
appears on the Ordnance Survey map.
%2B(2).jpg) |
| Trimble GeoXH 6000 on the key spot |
.jpg) |
| Newspaper clipping from 1988 |
Back in the Eighties, Bernard reported his find to the Ordnance Survey
and was told that the two 827m peaks were the highest points for miles around.
Dissatisfied with this answer he persevered and gave detailed co-ordinates
for the peak. This prompted the OS to examine their large-scale
mapping, on which was found a tiny 830m ring contour that did not appear on the
publicly available 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 maps.
The news of Bernard’s ‘new mountain’ hit the headlines, and soon the
tiny 830m ring contour appeared on the new OS 1:25,000 Explorer
map. However, one thing the Ordnance Survey never did was to give the
mountain an accurate absolute height, relegating it to among the few principal
Welsh mountains that do not have definitive values for elevation. As the
summit is made up of a number of embedded rocks, all jutting out of the ground,
the height could well be higher than thought. If an accurate height was
given to the mountain, it would also be the culmination of a story that first
started over 25 years ago when Bernard Wright and his friends came across a
mountain that seemed not to exist.
"The Ordnance Survey
never gave the mountain an accurate absolute height"
Here's where I entered the story, armed with a new piece of
equipment; the Trimble GeoXH 6000. This fancy bit of kit only weighs
2lb and can achieve accurate height results in no more than five minutes.
The Trimble GeoXH 6000 is proving to be a great piece of equipment to
‘screen’ hills with, as its precision is +/- 0.15m when compared to our Leica
GS15 whose accuracy is +/- 0.05m, but only when we collect upwards of two hours
of data. Any hill measured quickly with the Trimble whose height is close to a
recognised threshold, such as 2000ft or 3000ft, can then be more slowly
surveyed to a higher degree of accuracy with our Leica equipment.
.jpg) |
| The Trimble GeoXH 6000 gathers its ten minutes of data on the high point of Y Berwyn |
However, this particular hill was more than a lump of rock that
I wanted to place a bit of surveying equipment on top of. It held an
emotional tie for me too, as I had scattered some of my father’s
ashes from its highest point. The height of the hill had intrigued me ever
since I'd read about Bernard Wright’s new mountain in the late 1980s.
The trip to survey Craig Berwyn proved quite an expedition as
I wanted to survey all eleven hills and their respective cols that make up
the Maen Gwynedd Horseshoe. This is an extended walk I've done on many
occasions but never with the intent to carry out so many surveys. Of
course it was the high point of Craig Berwyn that really interested me.
I set out on the 21st June 2014. The surveying
expedition would require many hours to complete, but I had
settled weather, and the notorious peat paths of the higher Berwyn
were dry. As the highest rocks of the Berwyn were approached a slight breeze
picked up, but not enough to worry me as I placed the Trimble on the
very highest point of the mountain range, the same spot that Bernard Wright had
peered from all those years ago. The view from the summit took in all the
higher Snowdonia peaks to the west as well as the lower hills towards the
English border. In all the surveying trip took over 12½ hours to
complete.
Ten minutes of summit data were collected by the Trimble GeoXH 6000 and
later post processed, giving a result of 831.98m +/- 0.15m. So over 25
years since Bernard Wright first discovered the mountain its true height is now
known, and at 832m it seems that the little 830m ring contour on OS maps
is hiding quite a substantial rock under it!
Further details of this survey
and others can be found on Myrddyn’s blog:
Please click {here} to see the
original article published on the UKHillwalking website
No comments:
Post a Comment