Paving Snowdon? Hardly
From 1992-2000 I went to Scotland seven times for the hillwalking and culture
and while there I studied the history and practice of tracks on the hills from Roman times onward to today, when the public or quasi-public aurhorities who have the care of mountain properties often have to make decisions like this one. This article focuses on the aesthetics of tarmac plus the old discussion about how making the hills easier to climb attracts people whose fitness, gear, and knowledge are such as make them unfit to cope with conditions often found on the higher hills. The same debate is ongoing in most mountain tourist areas, as I know it is here and in Britain.
I think a balanced perspective on this matter was offered by Mr Williams from the Snowdonia National Park Authority: the paving was done on 100 m. of 2500- m. trail that is an old wagon road, or at least pony track, one of five trails up Snowdon, in order to stop the erosion that was unmanageable by less intense means. It is the same width as the rest of the path, I note. The history of paths on Snowdon, as well as other popular walking and climbing hills in Britain, is one of huge numbers of people following the easiest routes on high-altitude steep rough terrain of heavy rainfall and organic soil, usually treeless. The erosion thus produced is spectacularly destructive especially in such open terrain, and providing paths durable enough to arrest the traffic is not only difficult and expensive but also subject to the criticism that they mustn't make the climb any easier.
What most such authorities, (I except Cairngorms) have decided is the same philosophy we follow here, independently arrived at: we keep trails on the hill not to make them easier, but to lessen erosion by confining traffic to narrow defined routes in order to spare the rest of the landscape the impact of all those boots. To do that, we must have the hiker stay on the path, which they will only do if they percieve the path as smoother, drier, and less steep than the other choices they have at any given place. Making it easier is only a means to the end of lessening our impact on the mountainside we all love and want to preserve, RIGHT?
Us pathworkers have to choose every day how we will balance wildness with the ease of users. We have long since decided that since the crowds will come anyway, it is our mission to protect the land from the crowds. People who want a more wilderness experience can roam off the trail at will.
Creag Nan Drochaid
