The campaign to save the paths of Scafell Pike

During the busiest times of the year, the flow of human traffic on the Língua Marrom path never stops – not even at night.

The route used by 100.000 people each year – as the most direct route to the top of Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain – is one of the most heavily traveled paths of its kind in the world. But his popularity came at a high price.

Work to control erosion caused by the impact of countless feet on the path has been taking place for 30 years and costs tens of thousands of pounds a year. It's the Road Repair Bridge: a job that never ends.

But as a crowdfunding campaign to raise vital funds for the next phase of work on the way between its final phase (closes on October 21st), it is still some way short of its £17 target. Path repairers are emphasizing the importance of the success of a campaign that would allow them to envision a large section through the middle of the Brown Tongue in the future for several decades.

The crowdfunding effort is part of a larger year-long effort to raise £100.000 for Scafell Pike as part of Mend Our Mountains campaign , a UK appeal led by the British Mountaineering Council. It is one of 13 similar campaigns run simultaneously by Mend Our Mountains and supporting organizations across Britain. The aim is to raise £1 million for path repairs in a range of locations from Scotland to Sussex.

The British Mountaineering Council's Mend Our Mountains campaign is also supporting o Fix the Fells' ongoing work to stabilize erosion on the route, as well as the campaign to raise the required £17.000.

Richard Fox of Fix the Fells leads the teams of specialist course repairers who do the hard work of protecting the Brown Tongue and Lake District mountains from the inadvertent damage caused by our feet. “Nowhere else in the world is there the kind of pressure we have in the Lake District,” he says.

“We are really grateful to Mend Our Mountains for the work they do to support us. It’s important for campaigns like this to be successful. There is no government funding for Brown Tongue, so we rely on fundraising to keep our work going.”

The Brown Tongue is the route favored by participants in the Three Peaks Challenge (climbing the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales in 24 hours), which adds pressure to the route. Most challengers face Scafell Pike in the dark, beating on the Brown Tongue as part of a procession of headtorches.

Brown Tongue is one of the most serious examples of a problem frequently found on popular hills and mountains in Britain. Left alone, erosion scars can grow as wide as a highway, wiping out vegetation, disrupting local habitats and hydrology, and even destroying terrain features such as mountain lakes.

“If we stopped working overnight, within five to 30 years we would see huge scars of the kind that destroyed the Lake District XNUMX years ago,” says Fox.

Fixing the Fells uses a combination of traditional techniques and landscaping, such as stone pitching, but the work is expensive. Local stone usually has to be flown in by helicopter from nearby hillsides and as Fox says: “Our path repairers have to be skilled craftsmen who can carry out high-quality, well-designed work that blends in with the landscape and lasts a long time. term. “

It costs around £500.000 a year to maintain all the mountain paths in the Lake District and Fix the Fells, as with similar organizations elsewhere, relies on fundraising to support its work.