A number of articles have recently been published regarding
the mountain status of Moelwyn Mawr.
These articles relate to a survey that John, Graham and I undertook on
16th June this year. The hill
we surveyed is to the north of
Moelwyn Mawr and it was not to
Moelwyn Mawr, which with a prominence of c 385m unquestionably retains its
mountain status.
The hill to the north of Moelwyn Mawr which we surveyed was
included in the listing of 2,000ft mountains of Wales by John and Anne Nuttall
as a basic levelling survey had given it a drop of approximately 15.2m. When this hill was accepted into John and
Ann’s list they coined the name of Moelwyn Mawr North Ridge Top for it. Unfortunately confusion has arisen in a
number of articles between what is Moelwyn Mawr and what is a Northern Ridge
Top.
Confusion has also arisen about the measurement we attained
for the drop value of this hill. We line
surveyed from bwlch to summit and then from summit to bwlch and also gathered
an hour’s data from both summit and bwlch with our Leica GS15. Both surveying methods give a value of 14.77m
of drop, this is insufficient for this northern top to retain its ‘mountain’
status and therefore it has been deleted from the listing of Nuttalls.
As the qualifying threshold for drop in the Nuttalls list is
a minimum of 15m, our survey proved that this hill fell short by 0.23m
(23cm). Unfortunately confusion has also
arisen in a number of published articles relating to this measurement as it has
been reported that the hill failed to retain its ‘mountain’ status by 23mm. This figure should of course be 23cm, an easy
error to make but one of importance when dealing with the margins of
measurement from a line survey.
However, where confusion can be forgiven because of the
substituting of a ‘c’ to an ‘m’, it is hard to deal with poor old Moelwyn Mawr
and its unsavoury oblivion as a ‘mountain’.
Part of this confusion stems from the name that has been used, in this
case that of Moelwyn Mawr North Ridge Top, which for the uninitiated proved too
much to comprehend.
Perhaps this is a case in point where the use of an invented
name is both unsatisfactory and unnecessary as this hill has a locally known
name which will be used when Aled Williams and I publish future place-name
detail relating to it.
The stance that Aled and I adopt on such matters is to use the point (Pt.)
notation for seemingly unnamed hills, this gives time for a hill list author to
research an appropriate name for the hill, and where one is not found it leaves
research open to future generations, whereas the use of an invented name has an
uncanny knack of becoming endorsed within the hill bagging community, and in
this instance such an invented name has caused confusion amongst some national
newspapers.
Published newspaper articles relating to our survey are listed below:
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