The Complete Munro Tick List: All 282 Peaks

The tick list is the heart of Munro bagging. There are 282 Munros — Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet (914.4m) on the official Scottish Mountaineering Club list — and the whole game is climbing them one by one and marking each off until the list is complete. This guide explains what is on the list, how the number is arrived at, the different ways to organise your own tick list, and how to keep track without losing the record halfway through a decade-long round.

What's on the list — and why it's 282

A Munro is a distinct Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet. The current SMC list holds 282 Munros plus a further set of Munro Tops — subsidiary summits over 3,000 feet that are not considered separate mountains. Only the 282 Munros are needed for "compleation"; the Tops are an optional extra that dedicated baggers also collect. The exact count has changed over the years as the SMC has revised the list with better surveying — peaks have been promoted, demoted and reclassified — which is why older books sometimes quote a different total. For the purposes of your tick list, 282 is the number that matters.

Ways to organise your tick list

There is no single correct order — how you organise the list shapes how you plan your bagging:

• By region. The most practical arrangement for planning. Scotland's Munros fall into natural areas — the Southern Highlands, Cairngorms, Lochaber, Kintail, Torridon, Fisherfield, Skye and more. Ticking region by region means you plan trips around clusters and minimise driving.
• By height. A popular novelty ordering — from Ben Nevis (1,345m) down to the smallest Munros just over 914.4m. Satisfying to work down, but geographically scattered.
• By difficulty. Easiest first (the gentle Perthshire and Glenshee hills), saving the hardest — the Skye Cuillin, the Aonach Eagach, the remote Fisherfield and Knoydart peaks — for when your skills and fitness have grown.
• By proximity to home. Bag your local hills first, then expand outwards as you gain confidence and start planning longer trips.

How to keep track

A round can take anywhere from a few years to a lifetime, so the record needs to survive that long. The traditional methods are a printed list you tick with a pen, or the SMC's Munros book with its logbook pages. Both work, and there is genuine pleasure in a well-thumbed paper list — but paper gets lost, and it can't tell you which nearby Munros you still need when you're standing in a car park deciding where to go.

A dedicated app solves both problems: it holds the full 282, records the date you climbed each, shows your progress as a map and a percentage, and — crucially — lets you filter to "unclimbed Munros near me" when you're planning. The Munros app is built around exactly this: tap a summit to log it, see your completed peaks light up on the map, and never lose the record. For a fuller comparison of tracking methods, see our guide to how to track your Munros.

From tick list to compleation

Finishing all 282 is called "compleation" (spelled the old way by tradition), and finishers can register with the SMC's Munroist list. The final Munro is usually chosen deliberately — somewhere special, climbed with friends. Whatever list you keep and however you order it, the tick list is what turns a set of unrelated walks into a single, years-long project. See compleating your Munro round for how to plan the finish.

Related guides

• How to track your Munros — apps, spreadsheets and paper lists compared
• How long does it take to bag all the Munros?
• Munros, Corbetts, Grahams and Donalds explained
• Munros tracking app — log all 282 and watch your progress build