My story with the Cairngorms didn’t begin in the mountains themselves, but with a map. I knew nothing about them, but a friend converted me. He would speak about the place with such love, admiration, and mystery that I soon found myself full of questions. In the following weeks, he gave me his map, and I began spending hours studying it. A particular obsession arose in me: paths, and why some, well known by hillwalkers, were missing from the map.
The Cairngorms form the highest mountain area in the UK (save Ben Nevis), with a granite plateau that rises to 1,200 metres above sea level and is breached by glacial valleys. This high plateau offers the UK’s only arctic-like climate, and is home to a unique ecosystem, record wind speeds, and snow patches that can linger for most of the year. It is a place that feels both exposed and held, somewhere I like to go to find nothing else other than rawness and silence, somewhere that resists being fully mapped and captured in terms of experience. Over the past century, the Cairngorms have gained considerable recreational use, transforming the area and thus altering its track network, both through development and erasure.
The evolution of the Cairngorms’ tracks can’t be separated from their history. In this landscape, every path is shaped by how people have moved through it, and what they’ve left behind.
Three major periods of change have shaped the area: before the 1940s, from the 1940s to the 1970s, and from the 1970s onward.
Before the 1940s, and especially during the 19th century, the Cairngorms were relatively isolated, used primarily by locals for deer stalking and hillwalking. A first shift occurred in the 1890s when the area began attracting winter visitors for skiing. This marked a change in how people interacted with the mountains, from a quiet, locally known space to one increasingly visited for recreation. Hillwalkers used existing paths originally created for other purposes: ‘Before 1940, most human paths were former drove routes such as Lairig Ghru, 19th-century paths for deer-carrying ponies, and old paths to shielings and peat bogs’ (Watson, 1984). We can imagine that the track network then was something passed down through use and memory, shared within the local community but rarely recorded in full. And without widely available maps, much of the area remained inaccessible to outsiders until the real turning point in the 1940s.
The post-war context, combined with developments in cartography, fuelled interest in hillwalking, climbing and winter sports across Britain, leading to the construction of new infrastructure in the Cairngorms, such as the Glenmore National Forest Park in 1946 and the first chairlift in 1961. Two main consequences followed: the development of new paths from 1946 onward to avoid overcrowding the existing ones, and the construction of high-altitude shelters from 1951 to 1967. In the span of 30 years, the place was transformed. Tamed by infrastructure and made widely accessible through maps, the Cairngorms were no longer just known to locals and seasonal skiers, but visited year-round by tourists from far beyond the Highlands. The expansion of the track network was thus a direct response to a familiar human impulse: when we discover a place, we rarely settle for what is already there. We push further, want more, often to the detriment of the place itself. Yet, it wasn’t until the 1970s that concerns over safety and environmental preservation began to rise.
In November 1971, Britain’s worst mountaineering disaster occurred on the Cairngorm plateau, when a group attempted to reach the Curran Shelter but became stranded out in the open for two nights in a blizzard. The tragic loss of six lives sparked debate over the safety of high-altitude shelters, and by 1991, most had been removed, both physically and from maps.
During the 1970s, the number of avalanches and accidents increased significantly, with 22 avalanches recorded between December 1977 and May 1978 (Ward, 1980), prompting widespread recognition of this serious risk. At the same time, the environmental impact of increasing foot traffic became a growing concern. All the new infrastructure put pressure on the landscape, and damage from human activity became visible in track widening, soil erosion and vegetation damage (Lance, Baugh and Love, 1989). The Cairngorms show us that cartography can offer safety to those who use the maps, but also vulnerability to the places being mapped. The more visible a landscape becomes, the more exposed it is to pressure and change. Conversations about protecting the landscape intensified, eventually leading to the creation of the Cairngorms National Park in 2003. But in this urge for expansion, how can we explain the erasures and omissions of tracks?
When I first began thinking about the erasure of tracks from maps, the question that haunted me was, Why? Why have cartographers sometimes stopped indicating (or altogether omitted) paths that are well known in the hillwalking community?
My first thought was to speak with experts, specifically, the people behind my favourite Cairngorms map, HARVEY Maps. I was kindly invited to their workplace in Doune to learn more about cartography and to consult their archives. I was welcomed by Luke, who explained that HARVEY Maps uses a technique called photogrammetry: the team interprets aerial images to decide whether a track should be shown on the map. If a path is clearly visible in the images, it is included. If not, it is left off (or partially indicated). Surveyors also visit the terrain directly to confirm what they see on the ground. In other words, HARVEY’s cartography is primarily based on visible, physical traces.
I asked whether a higher authority ever requests certain paths be excluded for safety or environmental reasons. While landowners and, in one case, a mountain rescue team have occasionally made such requests, these are not standard practice.
This raised a new question: what causes a track to vanish from the ground? I explored this question while looking at two case studies.
1) Change in Access Pattern: Creag an Leth-choin (Lurcher’s Crag)
In the first period of change that shaped the Cairngorms (before the 1940s), the plateau was most commonly accessed from the north via two main routes: from Cairn Gorm, and from Creag an Leth-choin (via the Chalamain Gap). With only minimal tracks available, getting onto the plateau was already a long day’s walk – an inaccessible, demanding landscape for many. To reach the plateau was then, in itself, an achievement. Over a 50-year span from 1896 to 1946, dozens of walk reports published in The Cairngorm Club Journal describe hillwalkers reaching the plateau via Creag an Leth-choin, highlighting its former popularity. The path roughly followed a boundary line dividing two civil parishes, visible on historical maps:
However, after the 1940s, reports of walkers using this route began to fade, coinciding with the second phase of development. The opening of the Cairngorm ski centre in 1961 marked a turning point, establishing the Miadan Creag an Leth-choin track as the dominant access route to the plateau. The plateau was no longer a privileged place for a few hikers; it became widely accessible via a relatively easy and quick walk, drawing crowds. As this newer route grew in popularity, Creag an Leth-choin fell into disuse, and the once-clear path began to fade into the landscape.
When a former route is no longer pressured by human presence, it begins to heal. The track disappears, and in time, so does its presence on the map. Mapping an area is thus a dialogue between us and the hills. It shows where to interact with the land, and where we used to, until those places become too faint to trace. Today, the path is still shown on some maps, but only as an intermittent line embodying its diminishing physical presence.
It is still used occasionally by hillwalkers travelling via the Chalamain Gap, but Creag an Leth-choin now stands as a reminder of how the evolving use of the Cairngorms continues to reshape its track network.
2) Avalanche/Erosion-Prone Areas: March Burn, Allt a’ Choire Mhóir and the Goat Track
Not all paths are meant to be followed, and not all that are followed are meant to be mapped. In the Cairngorms, some routes exist in a kind of twilight: well-trodden by the experienced few, yet invisible on paper. I’ve come to see these omissions not as gaps, but as decisions shaped by risk, memory and a quiet respect for the land.
March Burn and Allt a’ Choire Mhóir can be considered together for two reasons: both are actually streams, and both run down from the Cairngorm plateau into the Lairig Ghru. These routes appear in walk reports from The Cairngorm Club Journal from 1898 to 1988 as ascent and descent options between the plateau and the Lairig Ghru, and are still frequently referenced in hiking blogs such as Walkhighlands. Despite this long-standing presence in hillwalking culture, neither path has ever been officially marked on maps.
This shows that omission doesn’t entail absence. Some paths are kept within a small, experienced circle, passed down through use and the ability to navigate subtle lines in harsh terrain. Maps are tools for both seasonal walkers and seasoned mountaineers, but they aren’t used the same way. While occasional visitors tend to rely on clearly defined lines, experienced walkers often feel confident enough to trace their own. How we navigate the mountains varies with experience, risk knowledge and familiarity.
In this case, the decision to omit these routes may lie in their context. The Lairig Ghru is widely recognised (Ward, 1984; Luckman, 1992) as a hazardous area prone to avalanches and rockfalls due to its steep-sided slopes. Luckman (1992) explains that ‘the Lairig Ghru and Central Cairngorms contain the greatest density and most clearly developed snow avalanche landforms yet described from Scotland’. The Cairngorm Club Journal also records two major avalanche incidents, one in 1975 involving nine people, and another in 1979, in which two people were caught.
In his analysis, Luckman divides the Lairig Ghru into slope sections, each with distinct geological features. March Burn (which marks a boundary between two counties) is described as containing ‘prominent couloirs with bedrock exposure in the cliffs between them’, which serve as source areas for ‘major avalanche tracks that cross the valley at the Pools’. This makes March Burn a particularly avalanche-prone corridor, especially treacherous in winter.
With Allt a’ Choire Mhóir, the dangers appear less immediate: ‘significant debris flow activity has occurred […] in the past but most levées and lobes are well vegetated and do not appear to have been active since the intense storm in 1956’. Still, its steep and unstable terrain poses challenges for both access and safety.
Though the Goat Track lies outside the Lairig Ghru (and is not a stream), its terrain shares many of the same risks with Allt a’ Choire Mhóir and March Burn. The major difference lies elsewhere: of all the tracks studied so far, it is arguably the most popular among the hillwalking community, yet it is frequently omitted from maps.
The Goat Track runs along the steep slopes of Coire an t-Sneachda and was originally a deer path, later widened by hillwalkers (Watson, 2008). Like some sections of the Lairig Ghru, this coire is notorious for avalanches. In one instance, four students were caught in an avalanche while climbing the Goat Track in 1978 (The Cairngorm Club Journal). In addition to avalanche risk, the area is also prone to rockfalls due to ongoing soil erosion. Another persistent issue is the presence of icy snow patches, which can linger year-round. These may render the route impassable without crampons or force walkers to deviate from the path, leading to further soil degradation and vegetation damage.
On the two occasions I have used the Goat Track to reach the plateau, I encountered icy snow, falling rocks and sections where the track became unclear, forcing me to divert onto the open eastern slope, thereby unintentionally contributing to further erosion and vegetation damage.
Drawing on expert articles, walk reports in The Cairngorm Club Journal and my own experiences, the omission of March Burn, Allt a’ Choire Mhóir and the Goat Track from maps seems justified, both as a safety measure for hillwalkers and as a way to protect this already fragile environment. Including a route implies a degree of endorsement or responsibility. In these cases, the paths are located in unstable and hazardous areas. For cartographers, especially those relying on visual terrain assessments like HARVEY Maps, it is likely neither safe nor ethical to formalise such routes.
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The disappearance or omission of tracks from maps is not a neutral act. Each absence speaks about the values we assign to land, risk and responsibility. In the Cairngorms, tracks fade for many reasons: disuse, erosion, changing access patterns, or cartographers deciding not to draw a line that might lead someone into danger. These erasures matter since they shape how we navigate the hills, how we imagine them and, more subtly, our relationship to the mountains.
Some omissions are meant to protect both the hillwalker and the hill itself. In avalanche-prone areas like the Goat Track or March Burn, not showing a path may be a way to avoid inviting unnecessary risk. In zones of severe erosion, absence becomes a quiet plea for restraint. Drawing a path suggests possibility, even safety, while omitting one is often to urge caution without words.
But omission also raises questions about agency. What is the role of cartographers? Should maps reflect the ground as it is, in full detail, or should they be shaped by judgments about what should be seen? Here seems to lie a tension between openness and protection, and in this space of ambiguity lies the hiker’s own responsibility: to approach the hills not only with curiosity, but with caution, humility and respect.
What we choose to map reveals how we see wilderness: as something to explore, to protect, to manage or to leave untouched. Each blank space on the map becomes a conversation between presence and absence, still unfolding.
Bibliography & Cartography
Primary sources:
Lance, Art N., et al. “Continued Footpath Widening in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland.” Biological Conservation, vol. 49, no. 3, 1989, pp. 201–214, https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-3207(89)90036-0.
Luckman, B.H. “Debris Flows and Snow Avalanche Landforms in the Lairig Ghru, Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland.” Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Physical Geography, vol. 74, no. 2-3, Aug. 1992, pp. 109–121, https://doi.org/10.1080/04353676.1992.11880355.
The Cairngorm Club. The Cairngorm Club Journal. www.cairngormclub.org.uk/journals/.
Ward, R. G. W. “Avalanche Hazard in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland.” Journal of Glaciology, vol. 26, no. 94, 1980, pp. 31–41, https://doi.org/10.3189/s0022143000201020.
Ward, R.G.W. “Avalanche Prediction in Scotland: I. A Survey of Avalanche Activity.” Applied Geography, vol. 4, no. 2, Apr. 1984, pp. 91–108, https://doi.org/10.1016/0143-6228(84)90016-x.
Watson, Adam. “Paths and People in the Cairngorms.” Scottish Geographical Magazine, vol. 100, no. 3, Dec. 1984, pp. 151–160, https://doi.org/10.1080/00369228418736595.
Maps accessible from the National Library of Scotland website (https://maps.nls.uk):
ESRI imagery: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics
Open Topo Map
Ordnance Survey. Inverness-shire (Mainland), Sheet LXXXIX, Survey date: 1869, Publication date: 1872 , Size: map 61 x 92 cm (ca. 24 x 36 inches), on sheet ca. 70 x 100 cm (28 x 40 inches)
Other maps:
HARVEY Maps. Cairn Gorm & Ben Avon, Ultramap XT40, 2024
HARVEY Maps. Cairn Gorm & Ben Avon, Ultramap XT40, 2016
Ordnance Survey. Cairn Gorm & Aviemore: Explorer OL57, 2015
Secondary sources:
“Cairngorm Mountain.” Cairngorm Mountain, www.cairngormmountain.co.uk.
walkhighlands. “Walkhighlands.” Walkhighlands, 2025, www.walkhighlands.co.uk.
Cover image: Cyrus Crossan on Unsplash