A GROUP of climbers are clambering to discover if a Scottish mountain really is a Munro.

Graham Jackson, John Barnard and Myrddyn Phillips of G and J Surveys will take on Knight's Peak in the Cuillin Mountains of Skye next month to discover if it is 3002ft high, as is accepted by mountaineers.

Mountains in Scotland are only called a Munro if they are higher than 3000ft. Although Knight's Peak is registered as 3002ft in current Ordinance Survey maps, the measurement could be incorrect by up to six metres.

The height of Knight's Peak - which is a particularly jagged mountain with a number of sheer drops - was measured by a technique called photogrammetry, which converts aerial photographs into 3D images to predict the mountain's height without actually climbing it.

But G and J Surveys will lumber up the mountain with a Leica Geosystems Viva GS15 Professional receiver that uses GPS and satellites to narrow the correct height down to an error margin of just 5cm.

Myrddyn said although measuring mountains was fun, it was important to have precise measurements.

He said: "It's a hobby that is spent out of the love and appreciation that we get from the hillwalking, but it also stems out for the need to get accurate data.

"We will feed our findings into something called the Database of British and Irish hills, and that has detailed data for around some 7000-odd hills.

"What our findings could do is potentially affect the official number of Munros out there.

"What we've got to be careful of is the kind of tricky terrain that we have to climb. We don't want to go up there in high winds, so we just have to hope we can get up there in the time that we're up in Skye.

"This will probably be the most difficult mountain survey ever conducted in Britain."

The three climbers will also have another problem when they climb the mountain, as it has two tops and it is unknown which one is higher than the other.

Climbers who have made it to the top report that when on one, the other looks higher, and vice versa.