A novel abseiling litter pick is planned to take place on Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) on 20th September to clear decades of debris that has built up in the Trinity Gullies on Clogwyn y Garnedd, the popular winter climbing venue below the summit on the north-east face of the mountain.
© Dan Bailey
The following day, 40 walking volunteers will collect as much litter as possible on the hill, including the rubbish removed from the gullies, in the BMC's The Big Clean Up event.
© BMC
BMC Access & Conservation Officer for Wales, Tom Carrick, said:
"This is an unprecedented event - no one has abseiled down into the Trinity Gullies before to remove this litter, which has accumulated over many, many years. Some of it could have been sitting there since the early 1900s. We will be analysing and categorising what we find in conjunction with Trash Free Trails' State of the Trails report, so it will be very interesting to see just how old this rubbish is.
"We're not talking about deliberate fly-tipping here on Yr Wyddfa. These gullies are natural debris traps on the lea side of the mountain, so anything left on the summit is likely to end up in them until a dedicated, safely-executed litter pick like this one.
"It's important to emphasise that everyone is welcome in the outdoors and the vast majority of the 600,000 people visiting Yr Wyddfa each year have great respect for the mountains and the environment; they would never dream of discarding any litter on purpose. Rubbish can be dropped accidentally by anyone, however careful they are, and blown away into these gullies."
Once collected, the rubbish will be sorted and categorised by the volunteers and the Trash Free Trails research team.
Trash Free Trails Communications Manager Rachel Coleman said:
"There is very little research to understand how much single-use pollution is out there and how it is affecting flora, fauna and human beings. Trash Free Trails aims to find out what has been dropped and educate people about where this pollution ends up. It can be very harmful for wildlife, and here on Yr Wyddfa it's detrimental to marginal Arctic alpine species.
"So we are asking volunteers to not only remove this pollution while enjoying their local and national trails, but also to tell us what they find through the State of the Trails Report. It's hugely empowering for people to know they can contribute to a project that has the potential to create massive change in the long term."
© Sam Dugon, Trash Free Trails
The BMC suggest walkers elsewhere might like to go out into their local hills on the same day, collecting any rubbish they find and logging it with Trash Free Trails. Send a photo of all your rubbish (plus yourself if you can) to the BMC's Summit magazine, and the winner of the best trash mountain photo will win a prize.
Partners in this event include: Trash Free Trails, Plantlife, Eryri National Park, Cymdeithas Eryri, RAW Adventures, and the Snowdon Mountain Railway.
Comments
I am fascinated to see photos of what gets discovered, especially with regards to the older historical finds.
Would this rubbish be stuff that us climbers have left there (to our shame) or stuff that's come down from the milling hordes above ?
There's a grain of truth in this
As it says in the article: "These gullies are natural debris traps on the lea side of the mountain, so anything left on the summit is likely to end up in them"
Both, surely. I'd hope climbers are a little more respectful of the mountain environment than average, but we're certainly not perfect. And the article makes the valid point that even people who would never litter on purpose will occasionally have rubbish unexpectedly fall out of a pocket or bag and blow away before it can be caught.