I was a bairn when ‘The Munros in Winter’ came out. I remember booking it out of the library many many times until i joined the Army and bought a copy. It lit a flame in me.
I recall tracing Martins route on an OS sheet of Scotland. I did the same on a Bartholomews map of the Alps when ‘Alps 4000’ came out. Hugely influential books both.
In May 2019, some 33 years after the Munros book came out i was driving South through Glencoe. When i got near the ski-centre my phone pinged repeatedly with a message. I was on my home from a week of mountaineering in the far North West with Martin Moran Mountaineering. Several of the recent crop of newly qualified and aspirant @brit_mt_guides were instructing. Joy Moran was doing the hospitality and catering. The SMS messages, i think there were six from friends, all told me the same thing ‘Martin Moran is missing presumed dead in the Himalaya’. I pulled over and stood a while staring at the Buachaille.
The Moran family have set up the @martinmoranfoundation to ‘elevate the lives of young people through purpose, passion and powerful experiences in the mountains’. A commitment to inclusion, diversity and equality is at the heart of their mission.
If you haven’t read ‘Munros’ and ‘Alps’, please do, they are classics of the genre. If you are able to support the Foundation by making a donation, the details are at martinmoranfoundation.co.uk
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