Every mountain, every memory

Hello 👋, I'm Karyn an avid walker, runner and cyclist, and happiest when I'm somewhere with a decent view and muddy boots.

I've completed over 160 Munros, along with a fair few Marilyns and Nuttalls along the way. For years, everything lived either in my head or scrawled in notebooks — summits, dates, the routes I'd taken, the ones I wanted to go back to.

Then came Toffee and Tia. Two working cocker spaniels who decided, very early on, that the hills were absolutely their thing. Toffee is the enthusiastic one — nose down, ears flying, always twenty metres ahead and wondering what's taking everyone so long. Tia is the thoughtful one — she'll find the patch of sun at the summit, lie down with an air of great dignity, and refuse to leave until she's ready. Between them, they've made every walk funnier, warmer, and a lot more chaotic.

Then one day, heading up Bynack More, it struck me: what if there was somewhere to keep all of this properly? Not just a list of ticks, but a real record of the walks — the days out, the stories, the moments attached to each summit. The day we got soaked on the Cairngorm plateau. The moment Toffee went to jump into some water and didn't realise how deep it was! The views that stopped me mid-stride and made me feel genuinely lucky.

Cairn is my attempt to hold onto those moments, and to share that same quiet joy with anyone else who loves the hills.