Chance to wax lyrical about Scotland's mountains

Mountaineering Scotland’s competition will remain open for entries until the end of October.

Mountaineering Scotland has launched its annual Mountain Writing Competition for this year.

The representative body for hillwalkers, climbers, mountaineers and ski touring enthusiasts in Scotland, the organisations is looking for the best in new writing about mountains and mountaineering, both in prose and verse.

Whether it is the adrenaline rush of rock and ice climbing, the tranquillity and beauty of wandering gentle hills or the wonder of travelling in the high mountains, people have always felt driven to write about their experiences. And the steady stream of new books about the great outdoors demonstrates that people also like to read about it.

The competition is open to all, and entries can be fact or fiction, as long as the subject matter has a connection with any aspect of mountaineering, rock climbing, walking or ski mountaineering / ski touring.

Writers can submit one entry to each of the categories and first prize in both prose and poetry is £200. Second and third prize winners will receive £100 and £50 respectively.

As well as the cash prizes, winners will see their entries published here in ‘Scottish Mountaineer’, the quarterly Mountaineering Scotland magazine which is read by more than 14,000 members. Winning entries will also be published on the Mountaineering Scotland website.

Previous winners have included both published authors and people who have taken up creative writing for the first time and include names such as veteran outdoor writer Hamish Brown and more recent arrival John Burns, author of ‘The Last Hillwalker’, ‘Bothy Tales’ and other books.

You can read an archive of previous winners in both prose and poetry categories at www.mountaineering.scot/members/members-benefits/scottish-mountaineer-magazine/mountain-writing-competition.

For anyone considering entering, prose entries should be a maximum of 2,000 words long and poetry entries should be a maximum of 200 words, and it costs just £5 to enter per category. The deadline for all entries is 5pm on October 31. Full rules and details of how to enter are at www.mountaineering.scot/mountainwriting.