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The Analysis of One Picture

by Paul Gallagher

The field of view is first calculated at 28 degrees in the horizontal plane. The field of view is centred on the Sgurr Mhor summit of Beinn Alligin, 3,232 feet in height and 11.9 miles away. This is the starting point you have to be sure of at least on landmark before you can analyse the other details.

Next we compiled a map in Photoshop (from Bing maps) so that we could work at a high scale by dragging the view around. This gave sufficient coverage for the area involved but also provided enough detail to read contours for the gradient profiling later and for exact identification of summits.

We (Gallagher and McNamee) spent quite a lot of time arguing about which landmark was which and had to make a few amendments. Initially we could not decide whether the eastern end of Liathach would be visible or if Baosbhein would be hiding it.

Calculations showed that Liathach only had an elevation of 21 units and was in fact blocked by Baosbhein which had an elevation of 28 units. Having eliminated Liathach as a candidate for the mountain peeking through in the far distance we then had to determine which it was. As the terrain profile shows, it is unlikely that the triple buttress tops of Beinn Eighe would be visible, although not certain!

A key question we tried to answer involved the visibility (or not) of Sail Mhor, part of the Triple Butress group (below from slightly closer!).

The answer comes with a caveat, we felt Sail Mhor would not be visible but that the peak we could just detect in the image was Ruadh-stac Mor, which is to the left (western) end as the scene is viewed. The profile on the left, developed from the composite map above, suggests Sail Mhor might (just) be visible.



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026