Mend Our Mountains: BMC volunteers create 50m stepping stone path in Eryri (Snowdonia)
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The BMC volunteers have been super busy this summer, with the latest Get Stuck In project seeing 12 of them create a 50m length of stepping stone path to make a more sustainable way through the bog below Tryfan, Eryri (Snowdonia), North Wales.
If you are a member of the BMC or if you have supported the Mend Our Mountain campaign from the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust, this is what your generous donations are enabling us to do.
Get Stuck In Volunteer Coordinator and BMC Hill Walking Rep Steve Charles says, "We used a winch to move large stones as we made a path of stepping stones across a boggy area below the Bochlwyd Buttress, which will be well known to climbers in Eryri."
Also leading this event was BMC volunteer, Roy Hammond, who explains, "We worked with the National Trust rangers who are building a stepping stone path through this particularly boggy area to encourage walkers to not cause further erosion by walking around the wetter areas. These stepping stone paths are a great way to reduce erosion, whilst still enabling water to flow naturally down the side of the mountain.
"The boulders were flown in by helicopter, and placed near to where they were being pitched. We moved them in teams with steel bars and it’s actually easier than it looks! We dug holes to receive the boulders and manoeuvred them into place. It was really satisfying to see the path at end of the day, making an obvious route through what had previously been a really boggy area - and we loved trying the stepping stones out!"
BMC volunteers give back
Steve says, "Since the Get Stuck In projects started a couple of years ago, BMC volunteers have done well over 500 hours of work in the hills. That's a huge impact on the mountain environment. We hope that, over time, this is going to be a movement that grows, and we can provide more and more events. Then more and more people can 'Get Stuck In' and do more and more work to help 'Mend Our Mountains'.
"Many people in this group will regularly be going into the mountains, either walking, scrambling or climbing, and I myself have been going into the mountains for quite a long time. So, it's great to be able to give back and to feel that you are helping to preserve this environment for future generations, because it is under threat. You need to give it tender loving care. It needs to be nurtured because if we don't do anything, then it's going to be in a much poorer state when we hand it on."
Will you volunteer with the BMC?
Get Stuck In with the BMC to repair our precious mountain paths
Support the BMC ACT Mend Our Mountains campaign
Path repair is a surprisingly costly business. Working in remote locations with complex equipment and adverse weather conditions makes rebuilding trails an enormous and expensive challenge.
- £5 buys a pair of work gloves
- £10 buys a replacement handle for a mattock
- £25 buys a shovel or suncream & midge repellent for a ranger team
- £50 buys five garden skips for moving soil
- £150 buys protective clothing for path repairers
- £250 fixes approximately one metre of footpath
- £1000 flies ten bags of stone to an inaccessible mountain location
Support the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust Mend Our Mountains campaign to help projects like Get Stuck In repair and maintain the landscapes you love to walk and climb in.
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