Mapping Mountains – 2017 Retrospective

Mapping Mountains is now four years old and what started as a site whose content I could only envisage, is now becoming more refined as I become accustomed to how a blog set up to look like a website operates.

It is the refining of the site that has led Mapping Mountains through the last year, that and the astonishing number of hill reclassifications that have been documented mainly through the continuing LIDAR analysis conducted by Aled Williams, at the last count these numbered over 140 for the calendar year of 2017 alone!

At the start of 2017 a number of Change Resigters were added, this heading documents changes to lists that I am associated with and as well as giving details relating to each hill and its status change, these Registers also keep a running total of the overall number of hills in each list, due to the amount of hill reclassifications the latter was becoming ever more difficult to keep up-to-date.

During February the Y Pedwarau – The 400m Hills of Wales started publication on Mapping Mountains, the list has been published in group format, and this has continued throughout the year on the 10^th, 20^th and 30^th of each month.  This list is co-authored with Aled Williams and although all changes have been documented on this site the list in its published format needed updating with the wealth of survey and LIDAR data generated since Europeaklist publication in May 2013.  When the last group of Pedwar hills is published on 20^th January 2018 the list in its entirety will be available on Mapping Mountains and will be kept up-to-date when additional information is at hand.

The listing of Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales has also been making steady progress, with each new group appearing on a monthly basis and this will continue during 2018.

In May the listing of the Y Trichant were introduced, this list was originally published in October 2004 on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website, with publication on the RHB Yahoo group file database closely following in January 2005.  If you are wondering where the Welsh 300m P30s within the Tumps came from, well, look no farther, as this is the list that Mark Jackson duplicated.  Unfortunately by doing so Mark instigated years of data divergence that is ongoing.  The renaming of this list from The Welsh 300 Metre Peaks to the Y Trichant was long overdue as was the documentation of its publication history.

On a personal note I achieved a long sought after hill ambition and completed an ascent of my 1,000th Welsh P30 on Bryn y Fan (SN 931 884) with friends, bubbly and cake in attendance.  The resulting celebration and achievement instigated an article entitled Bagging the Welsh P30s – An Epic Hill List which praised the humble P30 and was published on UKHillwalking, this article has now been revised and published on Mapping Mountains and includes additional detail and is entitled Completing 1,000 Welsh P30s.

During the latter part of 2016 I suffered a series of injuries that culminated in keyhole surgery on my right knee in late summer of this year.  The post op recuperation resulted in having two months off the hill, but Aled kept me busy with a multitude of hill reclassifications, so all was not lost.

The refinement of the site has also included amending how posts within the four headings of Hill Reclassifications, Summit Relocations, Significant Height Revisions and Significant Name Changes are accessed.  All are now available grouped by the list that they are a part of.

Toward the end of 2016 Alan Dawson kindly informed me that Ordnance Survey had updated and released their OSGM15 remodelling, as well as pushing Calf Top over the threshold height of 2,000ft, this remodelling also coursed an awful lot of work as over 1,400 separate data sets produced by surveying with the Trimble GeoXH 6000 had to be updated, subsequently all survey heights for both summit and bwlch have now been converted to OSGM15 and these appear on the relevant survey post as well as on the Trimble Survey Spreadsheet.

During the converting to OSGM15 of all height values, the Dominance value was also added to all relevant survey posts and the Trimble Survey Spreadsheet.  This spreadsheet also now has columns giving the cumulative totals for P14, P20 and P30 hills that have been surveyed with the Trimble GeoXH 6000.

Maintaining the site takes a lot of time, but I wouldn’t have it otherwise, and because of all the above it has proved a busy year, this is apparent when considering that this article is the 300th consecutive day that a post has appeared on Mapping Mountains, and the following 28 days have already been scheduled with daily articles.   

And what is in store for Mapping Mountains during 2018; The Y Pedwarau will finish publication and an updated booklet for The Fours is planned, Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales will continue publication and more hills will be surveyed and more articles written.  Who knows I may even receive my agreed reimbursement from my two ex-colleagues in G&J Surveys for equipment that I still partly own, but then again Snowdon may be higher than Ben Nevis!

Lastly, I would like to express my thanks to all the people who have visited Mapping Mountains during the past year, your continued support gives me encouragement and I thank you for it, and I hope you have had a good 2017 and wish you well for the New Year and a fun filled time on the hills in 2018.

  

Myrddyn Phillips (1^st January 2018)