UKC

For interested parties who don't get the Mountaineering Scotland newsletter:

https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/north-face-car-park-members-update

(possibly this should be in the Access forum, but most of the other recent postings seem to go in the Winter one)

Good to see Mountaineering Scotland on the case, but without provision of facilities people will just keep using nature's toilet, and probably soak up any fine and park there overnight anyway. Didn't mention the key issues re access to the upper car park, has that been resolved for local guides?

I didn't gain any further knowledge from that, still doesn't give clear guidance to folks staying overnight in CIC?

Stuart 

Thanks for passing that on.

Thanks to Mountaineering Scotland for making our case, but doesn't look like anything will be happening soon as further meetings won't take place till later this year.

I live in Fort William and used to park there to take my young children for bike rides and adventures in the forest.  After two absolutely disgusting human turd encounters in the car park (and another involving my kids picking and eating wild strawberries growing right out of a shite), I have called it a day and said NO.  No more North Face car park.  No more human waste everywhere.  Until a simple composting toilet is built, this is a poor example of Scottish hospitality.  In New Zealand this would be totally unacceptable.  Bring on the National Park - this sort of issue would be fast-tracked I am sure.  

Build the toilet, then charge for parking.

By the way, I bring New Zealand into this, as there are great similarities between their landscape, their land use and their tourism, plus I have visited several times over the last twenty years and have seen how clever their tourism infrastructure is and how far it has come.  

"The increase in the number of visitors undertaking all manner of activities..."

What on earth could they mean?  

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Walking the dog??

Don't think I'm the first to say this, but I believe there were signs about logging operations?

I asked a ranger for one of the cairngorms estates with portaloos in their car park how much they are charged (delivery & servicing). The answer is not alot. If we're paying for parking in the NF car park I can't see how it's justified that FLS haven't put in toilets.

No, and it's won't be, despite the diplomacy and effort from one individual in particular. I'm afraid that was a privilege (paid), like so many others, scuppered by a significant minority who abused the situation. It wasn't just guides and instructors who could pay for a key, clubs, retailers, manufacturers, media organisations - in fact just about anyone who was willing to stump up the cash could get access.

I know this is massively simplified....but it's our bloody forest!  Why do we get dictated to by FLS - can we not get the ownership and management transferred to another body (John Muir Trust?)

Seems madness that decisions like this are being made by an arm's length organisation who's main function is managing commercial forestry, not managing access.

The privileged access to the upper carpark never felt like it was in a very democratic spirit anyway.

Yes Mar lodge use portaloos (despite the fact they have a compositing system that’s been out of action for years….another story). It takes something for an organisation to be more dysfunctional than the National Trust for Scotland…..,but ladies and gentlemen please welcome FLS.

As I said before this ongoing saga is a sad reflection on FLS, Highland Council, the local community councils, HIE, the Scottish tourism Minster, the local MSP & MP and MS. 

Scotlands got to the point it can’t even sort toilets out at the car park to its highest mountain, and the problem has been ongoing for the best part of two decades…..

….hopefully the winds of political change will provide new impetus, but I won’t hold my breath,

I suggest that there is no easy solution to this.

Making any car park bigger and providing facilities, such as toilets, will only encourage more people to use it (induced demand).

A bigger car park would at first seem to work, but soon more people would try and park there, causing further problems.

Should the A82 be made wider, of which I think there are proposals, then even more folk will travel to Fort William, so more induced demand.

Maybe one solution could be to make it harder to reach Ben Nevis by closing the North Face car park and directing people to the Nevis Range site.

Maybe also close and remove the CIC hut to make the area more wild.

As I say, there are no easy solutions.

I understand the carpark bit but not sure about this. I drove up and down the A82 for the first time in some years last week, and it's only the little bit along Lomond that isn't great now. I'm not sure widening that bit would make that much difference?

Wolves and bears... 

The popularity of the NF car park wasn't helped when after the pandemic FLS themselves invited anyone with a campervan to come and stay the night there.  (Which they did, often taking up to 3 carparks each and staying till around 1100 meaning few places for mountain people arriving around 07-0800.)  Thereafter that put it on the map for more than just the usual crowd.

We designed and built a prototype, off-grit toilet block for Forestry Scotland about 15 years ago. At the time the talk was for one of the first production units to be placed at the North Face carpark. The trials were successful but nothing came of the 'production run'.

I stayed at the CIC last weekend and just rolled the dice... It seemed to go okay. I just paid each day individually using the app

Aside from the carpark itself, and the approach thereto (which seemed axle-snappingly atrocious earlier this year), the only 'facilities' there we're being invited to stump up for are for paying FLS to park there

[Edit:] And even that's on a third-party app. I don't really mind paying £3 for the day, but it'd be much less hassle if it was just a card reader, and having some toilets would be a good use of the income

Sign says no overnight parking (not camping) Even if you pay £3 per day, you're still leaving car parked overnight.

Stuart 

Agreed! I indeed saw the sign. But it was late in the day so I took the gamble. For me at least, it paid off. Maybe I just got lucky though 

Again it's been said before, but a height barrier would be a nice simple way of cutting down on numbers of larger vehicles (i.e. motor homes) which take it more space.

"FLS have stressed that the objective is to accommodate existing use of the car park rather than to encourage an increase in the number of users."

This is a breathtakingly naive.

The Scottish Highlands and key destinations like Ben Nevis have become far more popular than they were previously. Burying their heads in the sand won't solve the issue, they need to work with others (councils, MS etc) to manage the increased visitor numbers along with the appropriate facilities. 

Land owners of all types in rural Scotland who own access points to the hills can't duck the issue, a large organisation like FLS need to be more realistic and do better.

Not sure how that would work with lorry loads of timber going out.

Hmmm, good point.

There are many places in the UK upland areas where maintaining an unspoilt mountain environment is a reasonable objective. Many others need a hybrid approach - principally toilet facilities. Ben Nevis isn't one of these, any more than Scafell Pike or Snowdon. Like it or not, too many people want to go there for the current facilities to cope and re-wilding (short of free-range tigers) won't reduce demand, it will just exacerbate the problems. 

Better to provide adequate climber's parking and park and ride, with toilets. Personally, I'm fine with a cable car up to the CIC hut and an Alpine-style cafe/restaurant that offers a decent Wiener Schnitzel and cold beer. )

This seems very likely, but have you seen any actual stats on this?  I was climbing in the south Peak District yesterday and was chatting with my climbing partner about how parking seems to have become completely fraught since covid I guess - although where we parked was easy - but I've not seen data saying just how much of an increase there has been. 

I climbed on Ben Nevis two Sunday's ago. I've been following a facebook group "Ben Nevis Conditions" (almost all walkers going up the tourist track) in the weeks running up to going to Scotland, to get an idea of how much snow there still was etc. I posted three photos and a short report in the group last Monday, and by today it has had 1.44 k likes and dozens and dozens of comments. This seems massive to me, far more "engagement" than I've ever seen in other hill and climbing conditions groups - and does seem to suggest just how popular Ben Nevis in particular is. But then I remember when I first climbed on the Ben in probably Feb. 1993 or 94, there being dozens of other tents up the Allt a Mhuilinn, and loads of other people in the coires climbing.

It’s obviously very hard to say and there are few hard data points.  It seams the Scottish winter game has changed, before most practitioner’s would very carefully follow the weather and make thier own educated predictions of routes that would be in.

Now a lot of climbers will follow what’s been reported in on social media.

As to data points at the end of Foot and Mouth you had to sign a log book to access the Ben. By six in the morning the Torlundy log book had hundreds of names and registrations. Granted the conditions were nearly once in a lifetime and the post F and m lockdown demand was high. But there was another log book for the Glen Nevis approach.

Isn't this just 'cos Toby Archer is the Taylor Swift of winter climbing?

I'm not a Swifty but generally it seems to be agreed that Swift is rather good at what she does, whilst after 30 years of winter climbing, I remain rather rubbish at it!

But what we want to know is, do you climb in a sequinned swimsuit?

I'd add Visit Scotland to that list too. For years they have milked the Highlands tourism cow but put very little back. It took the out of lockdown summers of 2020 and 2021 to make them realise that much of Scottish tourism infrastructure was crumbling, not fit for purpose or non existent. 

Davie