Blog: Planning Part 1

How to plan an adventure in the mountains.

Jack

11/27/20243 min read

Planning is one of the key components of having a safe and enjoyable experience in the mountains. Without it you might find yourself in a tricky situation that could have been avoided. So how do we plan a day’s hillwalking and what factors do we need to consider?

There are lots of ways to approach planning but personally I always start with the weather. This is probably the one element that affects my planning more than anything. Inevitably you may ask, “what’s the best weather forecast to look at?” or, “how do I find the forecast for the mountain I want to climb?”.

The key is to look at a range of mountain specific forecasts, and for me that usually means using MWIS (The Mountain Weather Information Service), The Met Office, and mountain-forecast.com. Using all three gives me forecasts for both whole mountain areas in the UK (e.g. the Cairngorms) and also individual summits (e.g. Ben Macdui). The forecasts might not always agree with one another so I typically base my planning on the worst outlook - this means that I won’t be underprepared and hopefully will be pleasantly surprised!

It might be that I already know the exact route or mountain I want to go up on a given day, but if I’m planning for myself then usually I’ll pick where has the best weather and go there. So if we’ve found an area with good weather, how do we then find walks to do or Munros to bag in that area?

WalkHighlands is a great resource for walks of all levels - from low level walks, to Munros, Corbetts, and multi-day trips like the West Highland Way. You can view walks by area or view their maps of Munros, Corbetts, etc (see screenshots above).

Although this is 2024 and seemingly everything is on the internet, I’m still very partial to a good guide book and you’ll often find routes or information in them that aren't on the internet. There’s often no right or wrong way to get from the bottom of a hill to the top so it’s worth looking for alternatives to the most popular routes.

It might be that following all that research you’ve still not found something you’re happy with, so that’s where my last method comes in: have a look at a map and plan your own route. Admittedly, this does require a bit of knowledge in map reading (we can help with that!) and some experience in understanding terrain, but sometimes planning your own route from scratch adds to the adventure!

Now that we’ve got our weather forecast and our route it’s time to think about what kit and equipment we need to take. That’ll be the topic of a future blog so make sure to follow us on social media to see that when it lands! It's also worth saying that whilst all of the above is applicable year round, when we’re thinking about winter hillwalking then there are other factors, such as the avalanche forecast, to consider.

Planning, understanding weather forecasts, knowing what kit to take, are all topics we cover in our Mountaincraft Skills Day. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to know more about the day, or to organise a skills day for yourself, your group of friends/family, or club.

See you on the hill soon,

Jack