Ben Lawers

Ben Lawers
Ben Lawers
Highest point
Prominence	915 m (3,002 ft)

Ben Lawers (Gaelic: Beinn Labhair) is one of the highest mountains in the southern part of the Scottish Highlands. It lies to the north side of Loch Tay, and is the highest point of a long ridge that includes seven Munros.

Ben Lawers was long thought to be over 4,000 ft in height; accurate measurement in the 1870s showed it to be some 17 ft short of this figure. In 1878, a group of twenty men spent a day building a large cairn in the hope of bringing the summit above the "magic" figure. The cairn is no longer there; in any case the Ordnance Survey ignored it as an artificial structure that was not truly part of the hill.

History

There is much evidence of former settlements and other human activity on the southern slopes of Ben Lawers above Loch Tay. There are ruins of cottages each surrounded by a small group of trees and the ridged pastures are signs of early cultivation. Overgrown tracks climb up the mountain from the valley to the peat beds and sheilings on the hillside. The fertile limestone and schist soils on these southern slopes have been farmed since very early times and there are many Bronze Age remains.

Prior to the fourteenth century, the mountain stood on the lands of Clan MacMillan. Chalmers of Lawers obtained the land by force from the clan in the mid 1300s in the reign of David II. The land was confiscated from the Chalmers family in 1473 by James III and given to Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy after Thomas Chalmers was implicated in the murder of James I. The lands have remained in the ownership of the Campbells of Glenorchy and Breadalbane right up to the present day.^[1]

National Trust for Scotland

Most of the south side of the Ben Lawers range has since 1950 been owned by the National Trust for Scotland and was purchased through the generosity of Percy Unna, a mountaineer and one time president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The area of land under Trust ownership was extended in 1996 by the purchase of the neighbouring Tarmachan range. The Trust owns a visitor centre located at the western end of the range, from where a much-eroded path leads to the summit. The visitors centre has an exhibition that explains the geological formation of the mountain, there is also a nature trail. A slightly different path also leads from the centre, heading for the summit by way of the intermediate peak of Beinn Ghlas.

Flora and Fauna

Ben Lawers is designated as a National Nature Reserve due to the abundance of rare alpine plants. It is regarded by botanists as one of the richest areas for alpine fauna in the UK, this is due to the schist rocks of the mountain which are situated at the correct altitude for the plants. The rocks supply an adequate amount of calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and iron to the plants and breaks down to a clayey soil which retains moisture. Some of the plants found on Lawers include Alpine Forget-me-not, roseroot, Net-leaved Willow and most of the Saxifrages. The mountain is also of interest to zoologists, some of the bird species include ravens, ring ouzels, red grouse, ptarmigan, dippers and curlews. Other rare species include the Viviparous lizard and the Wildcat.^[2]

Ascents

Alternative routes that avoid the erosion caused by the popularity of the two routes described above usually start by following Lawers Burn, which meet the A827 at the village of Lawers. Heading north from the burn allows the walker to climb the peaks to the northeast of Ben Lawers on the way. The most direct route from Lawers is to continue along the burn until Lochan nan Cat ("loch of the cat"), then heading straight to the summit by way of the east ridge.