Glossary – Hill Terms

When I started hill walking people would be referring to things like the ‘bealach’ and I hadn’t a clue what they were meaning. So here I’ll list some of the terms I’ve come across and what they mean. Most of the terms are Gaelic from what I can tell, which is what you’d expect seeing as the names of the hills are in Gaelic.

  • Arete – ridge
  • Bealach – Mountain pass
  • Belay – A means to attach a rope to a safe anchor point
  • Bothy – Mountain hut/refuse/shelter
  • Broch – Circular dry stone dwelling/tower
  • Burn – Stream
  • Cairn – Pile of stones marking a route or summit
  • Corbett – Hill between 2500 and 3000 feet
  • Cornice – Dangerous overhanging snow on a steep slope or cliff
  • Corrie – Rounded mountain valley
  • Glen (Gleann) – Valley
  • Lairig – Sloping hillside, deeply incised mountain pass
  • Lochan – Small loch
  • Munro – Hill over 3000 feet
  • Scree – loose, weathered rocks fragments.
  • Strath – flat floored wide glen/valley

2 thoughts on “Glossary – Hill Terms

  1. Site says:

    Hello, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues.
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    Reply
  2. Kenneth says:

    Thanks. Didn’t notice that, although given IE doesn’t even appear on usage stats anymore as it’s so low I’m not going to worry about it 🙂
    https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp
    Microsoft have pushed IE out in favour of Edge and even that is a low percentage (but appears to work with this site).

    Cheers anyway.

    Reply

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