Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team said a rising trend of callouts at Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, could become unsustainable. Angela Jones, from Eryri National Park, also known as Snowdonia, said “social media has caused over capacity” at popular locations leading to issues including erosion, as well as pressure on car parks and rescue services.
About 600,000 people climb the peak annually with the wider park seeing an influx since the Covid pandemic.
Llanberis MRT and its 60 volunteers believe 2023 is “shaping up to be the busiest year on record”, external. It has seen a rise of about 18% in the first eight months of this year compared with the same period last year. In 2022 it became the busiest mountain rescue service in the UK.
15 years ago, Llanberis MRT dealt with an excess of 80 callouts annually. There have already been 182 rescues so far this year compared with 155 in the first eight months of 2022.
Ms Jones, partnership manager for the national park, said photographs Yr Wyddfa’s waterfalls or pools shared on Instagram and TikTok did not tell the whole story as locations along the Watkin Path could be “extremely challenging”.
Ms Jones advised people to consider the implications of sharing particular scenes online because it could “encourage other people to follow you to those areas which can’t necessarily cope with that capacity, or people… who don’t have the same capabilities as you going into areas which may be really challenging for them”.
Mr Owen said he and colleagues were also trying to make visitors more aware of the need to plan their routes and to be properly prepared before heading into the mountains.
“A couple of weeks ago we were attending seven different incidents, all at the same time, so, for a small building and a small team, that’s really difficult.”
A queue to get to the top …
Crib Goch
… and a queue when you get there:
Summit
