Just wanted to acknowledge the #SOTA pioneers who paved the way for those of us who just starting out many years later.
Your summit comments (Tips), website reports, recommended parking coords, 360 degree summit views, GPX files and activation reports on the reflector are so much appreciated.
Imagine having to drive around to get to a suitable parking place or finding out the ascent route does not take you to the summit. Many have tried, succeeded or failed, shared their experience to assist those have gone after you.
I recently started a short thread about the difference between how logs are uploaded between SOTA and POTA but which also applied to other programs such as WWFF.
SOTA is simply far ahead with its systems. Many congratulations to those who put it together.
Your thanks need to go back a long way before SOTA! Guidebooks giving the best routes on British summits go back more than a hundred years though of course each generation has had to update them for changes in access and accommodation. In fact it is fair to claim that climbing mountains for fun is essentially a British invention, more specifically an invention of the upper middle classes in the 1850’s. They had the money and the leisure time to spend getting to the mountains (no easy matter then) and having a good old time in the favoured hostelries after a day tramping, scrambling and climbing in very heavily nailed boots, striking sparks off the rocks! When the Climbers Club was formed in 1898 one of its stated aims was to thoroughly explore the Welsh mountains! I believe what started all this off was the popularity of the writings of Wordsworth and the Lakeland poets in the first half of the 19th century, romanticising the mountains. We all owe a debt to those pioneers that found joy in climbing hills and mountains, a joy that has passed from generation to generation, each adding new facets, of which SOTA is probably the latest!
but hope to catch you on air again soon!