Largest in the lakes! BMC volunteers create earth barrier to preserve path up Scafell Pike

Hill Walking News
21 Aug
2 min read

This August, 12 BMC volunteers spent two days on Scafell Pike, Lake District, making a 20m 'megabund' in the latest Get Stuck In event, funded by the Mend Our Mountains campaign from the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust.

Extreme weather events like monsoon-type rainfall are increasing in the UK, as we've seen with major flooding events across lower lying areas in recent years with storms like Henk and Babet raging in full force. At the other end of the scale, England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike (978m), is affected in a different way - as the rain hammers down, even more water runs off the steep mountainside and stone footpaths that have been painstakingly built with specialist skills can have their foundations washed away; deep gullies can form in bare earth or gravel paths, and vegetation that would usually hold the earth together can find itself with no soil left to cling on to.

Left unchecked, this ruins footpaths fast, resulting in damaged ground that is hard to walk on and more difficult to navigate, devoid of vegetation and with less habitat for the local wildlife and flora to occupy.

For the best results and the biggest impact, it's obviously best to act before the footpath is destroyed, causing costly repairs, which is exactly why the work of our fantastic BMC volunteers is so important. Teams of these experienced hill walkers, climbers and mountaineers gather for Get Stuck In events in the Lake District and North Wales throughout the year to carry out vital path maintenance and repair work.

Project megbund

Led by BMC Hill Walking Rep and Get Stuck In inventor, Steve Charles, the latest event has achieved a Lake District first. "Last week 12 BMC volunteers met at the FRCC hut Brackenclose in Wasdale and worked with Fix the Fells rangers on a drainage project in Wasdale," he says. "A spring was producing a raging torrent in heavy rain, causing erosion which threatened the main path up Scafell Pike at Hollowstones, around 650m. A 'megabund' (or barrier) was built to deflect the water from the path. At over 20m long and 1m high it is the largest bund so far in the Lake District mountains. Rocks, stones and earth were covered in turf and landscaped to blend in with the surrounding mountain landscape."

A huge thank you to all our BMC volunteers who make this vital path work possible. And, 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 events are ongoing, so if you'd like to join one or donate to Mend Our Mountains to fund more work like this then that would be fantastic. Where else do you get to walk along your donation?

At 20m long and a metre high, this volunteer-built 'megabund' is the largest in the Lake District

BMC volunteers give back

Steve continues, "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."

We need your help!

This vital footpath repair work wouldn't be possible without volunteers and funding according to Volunteer Development Ranger Matt Tweed from Fix the Fells. "The BMC volunteers are absolutely invaluable in helping us to look after the Lake District," he says. "Imagine if there were only us four rangers toiling away at this - it would take much, much longer. Having the help of the BMC volunteers coming along and really knocking off a good stretch of repair work, it helps us move the project on and to look after the paths now and for the future.

"Before Fix the Fells was formed in 2001, the paths across the Lake District were were getting in a pretty bad shape. There were erosion scars 20-30m wide and five metres deep in places. All that material was getting washed into the rivers and down into the lakes. So without the work that we've been doing over the past 20 years or so, that erosion, combined with the increased number of visitors and more extreme weather events, that erosion would be getting worse and worse. The work that we are doing to stabilise and slow down those rates of erosion are absolutely crucial."

Volunteers provide crucial, free labour for Fix the Fells rangers on BMC Get Stuck In events

Support Mend Our Mountains!

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.

What's a Get Stuck In event like?

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