Schiehallion’s secrets
Scottish giant schiehallion’s historic landmarks can be tricky to find. Buried by snow, the challenge increases dramatically – but so does the reward in finding them…
Searching for historical treasures
Iwas sweating profusely. I’d just shifted what felt like several cubic tonnes of snow. My back ached, my knuckles were scraped and, despite having shed almost every layer except those required to preserve dignity, I was baking hot. But I was happy. Perhaps we should start at the beginning. Or before that, even.
In fact, in the words of the late, great Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin (an admittedly odd source of quote for a hillwalking magazine), “Let’s go back, let’s go back, let’s go way on, way back when…” It’s nearly 250 years ago – 1774, to be precise. A man called Nevil Maskelyne is on a rather odd mission: to weigh the world. This is not for any specific practical purpose: he is not looking to calculate the postage costs or estimate the complex additional fees involved in exceeding Ryanair’s baggage limits (even a man of Maskelyne’s intellectual calibre would struggle with that one). It is, more accurately, an attempt to establish the mass of the Earth for scientific purposes. If you’re interested in knowing exactly how this was done, you can find illuminating pieces online and in chapter 7 of Between the Sunset and the Sea*. What follows is very much an abridged version for the lay person.
In order to make his calculations, Maskelyne needed a couple of things. Firstly, he needed a great big chunk of rock – a piece of the Earth in miniature – which he could measure and use to scale up the gravitational effect of a known mass. In some respects (and fans of the mountain please forgive me), Schiehallion is a bit of a dull peak. It looks wonderfully triangular and mountain-shaped when seen from Loch Rannoch to the west, but that’s because you’re getting an end-on, foreshortened view of the mountain. In truth, Schiehallion is a long, tapering and unimaginatively symmetrical lump that rises gradually from the east as a broad, whalebacked ramp, culminating at its western end with a 1083m summit and a sudden, abrupt nose. As the ridge climbs, the slopes on either side are consistent and even. In short, Schiehallion was not a hard day in the mountain designer’s office. But this consistency and predictability, combined with its hefty size, made Schiehallion the ideal candidate for Maskelyne’s experiment – it’s far easier to calculate the mass and dimensions of a symmetrical shape than one textured with flutes, buttresses and ornate arêtes. The second thing he needed was a perfectly flat platform from which to conduct his science. Symmetrical Schiehallion may be, but flat it ain’t, so two platforms were excavated on the northern and southern flanks of the mountain, and small bothies constructed to function as on-the-hill labs.
“IT LOOKS WONDERFULLY TRIANGULAR AND MOUNTAIN-SHAPED WHEN SEEN FROM LOCH RANNOCH TO THE WEST”
We’d decided in the days before our trip to Scotland that it would be interesting to locate one of these sites.
You can find the grid references and coordinates easily enough online, but truly historical sites in the mountains are not ubiquitous, so finding them on the ground is always a moderately exciting proposition with more than a whiff of exploration about it. However, we had omitted to consider what effect an enthusiastic dumping of snow would have on our plans. Quite a big one, as it turned out. For starters, it was less like snow and more like the debris from an infinite number of finely shattered windscreens swept into neat drifts. These densely packed clusters of ice crystals performed more like caster sugar: unsupportive, uncooperative and generally unhelpful. But the regular rest breaks this hard going enforced upon us provided opportunities to acknowledge the smaller details of
Schiehallion’s vast surroundings. Early on, I damn near stood on an almost invisible amphibian crawling lethargically among the grassy tufts of a small snow-free patch of ground.
His small, newty features looked thoroughly pissed off. We named him Tiny because he was very small. Then we’d followed some badger prints through the snow hoping, somewhat ridiculously, that we might catch up with their maker. We never did, but we were treated to the sight of a white-tailed eagle being mobbed by a pair of smaller birds, possibly hen harriers or kestrels. These species aren’t actually particularly small, but seen swooping and darting around the ‘flying barn door’ that is the sea eagle, they looked sparrow-sized by comparison.
Eventually, we ran out of distractions and had no choice but to get our heads down and make long, climbing, diagonal traverse across the mountain’s southern flank. Rocks hidden by the snow made the journey tricker than it would have been if we could have more easily spotted the traps laid within their invisible hollows.
And where there were no rocks, the snow continued to do its best to inconvenience us without any help. We’d come prepared: in our packs were crampons and ice axes, and saved on my phone was the precise grid reference of the south-side platform.
“We should be here,” I called over to Tom. At least, the GPS suggested we should be there. But there was nothing to see on the featureless, snow-covered patch of hillside. I plodded up and looked around. Nothing. I plodded down and looked some more. Nothing. This was disheartening. We’d not been expecting flags and a gift shop, but some evidence of something
would have been nice. But no, nothing. Still, it was as good a place as any to stop for lunch and consider a Plan B. We settled down into bucket seats hastily hacked into the snow, pulled sandwiches from our packs, and popped open flasks of hot liquid refreshment. “I suppose we could be sitting right above it,” I said between mouthfuls of peanut butter and jam, more in hope than any sincere belief. “How big’s the platform meant to be?” Tom asked. “About five metres by five metres. And flat.” Tom looked doubtful. “The snow would have to be really deep to cover that.” Sipping on a steaming mug of Ribena, Tom retrieved an avalanche probe from his rucksack, extended it, and began absentmindedly prodding the snow. It sank easily into the soft surface. It kept sinking. 40cm… 70cm… 100cm. It hit solid ground 130cm below us. I leapt up. “Here, give me that.” Tom extracted the thin pole and passed it over to me. Cadbury’s Double Decker still in hand, I wandered up and down the slope, probing the snow. A few paces down the hill, the cover was shallower. Back up towards where Tom was sitting, it became deeper, and a step or three beyond him, deeper still. This suggested that under the deep drifted snow was a patch of flat hillside roughly… I eyed my footsteps on the slope and did some quick calculations… five metres across. I looked at Tom. Tom looked at me. We grabbed our snow shovels and began digging… If you’ve ever dug a snowhole, built a snowman or cleared a driveway, you’ll know the truth of the matter: snow is heavy. It immediately became clear that we weren’t going to excavate the whole site. Instead, channelling our inner Tony Robinsons, we began establishing trenches to determine the extent of the platform. The first was the hardest: a long, two-foot-wide ditch leading from the downhill to the uphill edge. The initial digging revealed ground not far below the snow. But as we dug further, more and more snow needed to be cleared, and we peeled off the windproof jackets and insulated layers of our lunch stop as sweat began to glisten on our faces. Before long, though, we had revealed an almost perfectly flat stretch of ground. Confidence and enthusiasm renewed, we set about excavating two more trenches to find the outer edges of the flat spot. We found them. The level ground at the base of our deep channels dug into the snow across the hillside came to an abrupt halt with steepening terrain. With a rough idea of the outer limits of this flat spot established, Tom marked the corners using our trekking poles, and began pacing out the distance between them. “I make it almost exactly five metres by five metres. I’m happy we’ve found it. Are you happy?” “I’m happy,” I replied.
We returned to our lunch, which had been discarded in the flurry of archaeological excitement, took a few photos, and then packed up and headed up for the summit of Schiehallion. It was as if the mountain knew we were feeling pleased with ourselves. The summit was a winter wonderland in condensed form. We were rewarded by sculptures of rime ice, thickly rippled like icing on a Christmas cake. Breaks in the cloud revealed a pristine, snow-blanketed landscape. Perhaps dismissing Schiehallion as dull had been unfair. Mathematically, scientifically, and, yes, even aesthetically, it might be predictably consistent. But as with all mountains, particularly those north of the border, physique is only part of the equation – the conditions, the route, and the purpose of the ascent all flavour the experience. And with Schiehallion you can add its history into the mix too. After all, it is a mountain that, almost literally, carries the weight of the world on its shoulders.