Mapping Mountains – 2024 Retrospective

 

Many years ago a good hill walking friend advised me that once the lists I had originated were put in spreadsheet form they would never be complete, as there would always be things that required updating.  This same philosophy is applicable to the Mapping Mountains site; however that doesn’t stop me from tinkering in the background and through updates making the various headings more accessible.  Therefore, the last year has been one of consolidation with a variety of headings either being updated or fully revamped, so let us now look at 2024 and the Mapping Mountains year in review:

 

January:

On the 10^th January the latest group of hills for The Fours – The 400m Hills of England was published.  This list now includes P15 subs and started publication on the 10^th September 2022, with the last group of hills scheduled for publication on the 10^th July 2024.

 

 

January: 

On the 27^th January the last post instigated by Aled Williams’ LIDAR analysis of all Welsh hills at and above 500m was published on Mapping Mountains.  These hills comprise the listing of The Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru and the LIDAR analysis took Aled many months to complete and entailed hundreds of hills, with the last post detailing a hill reclassification for Clipiau Duon. 

 

 

March:

I wanted to revamp the listing of Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales for a long time.  This list originated in 2009 and its publication on Mapping Mountains started in December 2015.  The list is available in its entirety in Google Doc format and a part of its revamp has been to alter the columns within the list with the Regions and Sub-Regions now dispensed with and the remaining columns amended to match those used in the latest version of The Fours – The 400m Hills of England list.  This revamp started in earnest during March and is ongoing.  The list will take a long time to fully update, however one thing that is complete is that all interpolated summit heights have now been LIDAR’ed.

 

 

April:

During the month of April the last post generated by the update of The Fours – The 400m Hills of England list was published on Mapping Mountains.  The updated version of this list started publication in group format in September 2022, with the last group and therefore the fully updated list published later in the year in July.  These posts detail all major alterations to the list, including status, height revision, summit relocation and name change. 

 

 

April:

The extended LIDAR coverage for Wales has enabled a multitude of hills to be accurately reassessed.  It has also enabled a number of headings on the Mapping Mountains site to be updated with more accurate numerical data.  During April this process was extended to the Change Register for the Welsh Marilyns.  This was originally published in March 2020 and all relevant detail has now been updated with the latest available LIDAR. 

 

 

May:

Another addition to the posts on Mapping Mountains has been the Monthly Synopsis.  These detail all major changes, both new, confirmation and retrospective that have appeared on Mapping Mountains during the preceding calendar month, with the first of these published on the 31st May 2024. 

 

 

July:

On the 10^th July the final group of hills for the updated and revised listing of the The Fours – The 400m Hills of England was published on Mapping Mountains.  It had taken 23 months to complete the revised list since the first group of hills were published on the 10^th September 2022.  The Mapping Mountains publication was soon followed by the updated and revised listing appearing on the Haroldstreet website and an article being published on the UKHillwalking website. 

 

 

August                 

Photo: Aled Williams

Two surveys of note were conducted with the Trimble GeoXH 6000 during the year; both of which by Aled Williams.  The first of these was in August with the heighting of Craig Cwrwgl (SH 615 615).  This is an upthrust of rock adjoining the north-easterly face of Elidir Fawr in the Glyderau.  To attain the summit requires a rock climb.  Aled surveyed both the summit and connecting bwlch for Welsh Highland P15 status.  The pillar eventually topped out with 14.5m of drop, so although it is not a P15, it is confirmed in the ranks of our Welsh Highland Subs. 

 

 

September:         

Part of the joy of having the Mapping Mountains site is that it can be used to either make statements or to delve in to the intricacies of terms associated with hill lists.  During September an article was published with the snappy little title of Terms applied to Hill Status alteration.  Where four main terms previously existed; addition, reclassification, deletion and reinstatement, there is now a fifth and even a sixth; Exclusion and Rejection.  Is this the proverbial eureka moment or a sign of a misplaced adulthood! 

 

 

October:              

Photo: Aled Williams

The second survey of note was Crib Goch (SH 624 551).  This hill was long sought after to be Trimbled and it was done so by Aled Williams.  This survey now completes the surveying via GNSS receiver of the 3,000ft’ers adjoined to the Yr Wyddfa group of hills.  All that now remains in Wales are a batch of hills in the Carneddau and one in the Glyderau.  Once these are complete we will have accurate heights for all the Welsh 3,000ft’ers. 

 

 

November:          

At the beginning of November I added another column to the Trimble Survey Spreadsheet.  This document catalogues all necessary detail relating to surveying with the Trimble GeoXH 6000.  The new column details the raw unprocessed height data documented by the Trimble.  Some of these heights are relatively close to the processed data result; others are not, with a multitude of heights between.  Not surprisingly the conclusion in comparison between unprocessed and processed data is that the former should never be used to quote any accurate height. 

 

 

November:       

Late on the 19^th November I had a phone call telling me I had just been mentioned on QI on BBC2.  It was towards the end of the programme and involved things that have changed size; London buses were mentioned as indeed was an Olympic swimming pool, this led on to the Wales/England border and how a mountain surveyor from Mapping Mountains named……. (yes they mentioned me by name with good pronunciation by Sandi Toksvig) had found that the border between these two countries was incorrectly placed resulting in Wales being too big.  It was all rather surreal.

 

December:        

On the evening of 24^th December I had an early Christmas present as the site views for Mapping Mountains exceeded 1,000,000.  This proved an excellent way to end the 2024 retrospective.

 

Year’s End: 

During 2024 another grand sweep for the year was achieved, as a separate post has been uploaded to Mapping Mountains on each and every day of the year. 

 

 

The Year Ahead: 

And what is in store for Mapping Mountains during 2025; the simple answer is, I don’t know.  Nothing major is planned.  However, I’m sure that the year ahead will bring one or two surprises with more hills surveyed and LIDAR’ed, and more tinkering and updating with the Mapping Mountains site. 

Lastly, I would like to thank all those who visit Mapping Mountains for their continued support and I hope the year ahead brings lots of happiness and fun-filled days on the hill. 

 

Myrddyn Phillips (1^st January 2025)