Ben Nevis

[Marmot]

I read in an article that they were trying to restrict the impact of tourist walkers on the summit of Ben'.
Stuff like removing all the odd cairns, and shortening the height of marker sticks which were put inplace to keep joe public from getting lost.

The cycle of how i see it, is climbers and serious mountaineers open new routes and the number of people who go up them increases until your fat american tourists decide they fancie having a stroll up there.
Fine, apart fromt he damage that they do, and the money that is needed to clean it up is alot. People spend this money to return the site to its natural state, thus encouraging more dont give two hoot walkers to come up and see what the fuss is about.

How i see it is, if we let these tourist sites, like the peak of ben, or snowdon become covered in trash then people will want to go there less, the numbers will decine and it can then be tidied for the enjoyment of the more enviromentally concious.

Thoughts?

[Digby]

Are you saying then, that we should keep the tops of our best mountains covered in crap so that tourists don't go there? It doesn't seem to have worked with Everest - more trash than ever and more and more people each year!

The Welsh idea is actually quite workable. They sacrifice Snowdon to the tourists so that most of the best peaks are only visited by real people.

Digby

[Marmot]

Tho the knife edge leading up to the top of snowdon is always a fun day out, took me 'rents up there, jokes!

Ok, the Everest example is a good one, but you just have to be rich to get up Everest these days, well thats the main route, i think the north face has only been attempted a few times, so thats still a clean route.

[insane_climber]

my dad keep askin y i dont like takin the tourist path up mountains so i told him i take him up tower ridge, he to one look at the route and hasnt said anything since