Mountains of Erosion

From being the occasional recreation of a few free spirits, hill-walking has soared in popularity in recent years to the point where more than a million people are clambering over Scottish mountains every year.

The result has been massive damage to vegetation, leading to soil erosion and the progressive defacing of wilderness areas. The mountains are literally crumbling away under the sheer weight of numbers tramping over them - and conservationists are losing ground every year in the battle to repair them.

``Overall our restoration work is not keeping pace with the damage,'' admits Paul Johnson, the head of countryside management in the National Trust for Scotland.

``The basic difficulty is shortage of funding. At the moment we are spending about #200,000 a year on tackling erosion, but to get on top of the problem I reckon we need a capital investment of 10 times that amount.''

The other drawback in Scotland is the absence of a central body for co-ordinating projects and funds. There is no equivalent of the English and Welsh National Parks, which leaves the care of the biggest wilderness area in Britain in the hands of a mish-mash of quangos, local authorites, and volunteers.

The monitoring and maintenance of the hills is thus a haphazard affair.

Mike Newbury of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland drew attention to the problem in a recent report on footpath improvement projects in the UK. He wrote: ``Work in Scotland is being accomplished by NTS, local authorities and various consortia with help from Scottish Natural Heritage, but, as far as I am aware, without any national planning, monitoring or organisation: the ultimate in ad hoc expedience.''

Experts in the field agree with his assessment. ``We need to find a new mechanism to co-ordinate planning and funding,'' says Paul Johnson. ``My personal view is that the countryside is a national resource, and caring for it should be paid for by central government through a national parks board.''

Cameron McNeish, the editor of The Great Outdoors magazine and a trustee of the Skye and Lochalsh Footpath Trust, goes further - he would have a national park encompassing all of the Scottish Highlands north of the geological fault between Loch Lomond and Stonehaven. ``I think we are way behind the rest of Britain in this respect,'' he says. ``SNH is a watchdog without teeth. What we need is a parks body with real powers regarding planning legislation and securing funds.''

The problem became apparent in the late 1970s, when improved roads, an upsurge in car ownership, and the advent of ``Munro-bagging'' dramatically swelled the numbers of ramblers in Scottish mountains. Out came new guide books, up and down went tens of thousands of walkers on the same well-worn paths, and soon the most popular routes began to look like dual carriageways. In some cases erosion is not simply an eyesore, it has become potentially dangerous.

The process is fairly simple. Boots quickly wear away the fragile upper crust of vegetation, exposing loose earth. The Scottish weather then gets to work, washing out soils and sub-soils and leaving a nasty scar on the hillside. Walkers, coming upon damaged ground, invariably walk around it, thereby repeating the process on either side. So the ``path'' gets wider, and wider, and eventually it becomes a monumental blot on the landscape.

Bob Aitken, a consultant to Scottish Natural Heritage, says the ``obsessional behaviour'' of Munro-baggers in Britain has reached a pitch unknown elsewhere in the climbing world. ``Scotland's mountains were never designed with recreation in mind, or at least not the levels of walking and climbing, hill-running, mountain-biking, skiing and other activities that they are now experiencing.''

Ben Lawers and its smaller neighbour Beinn Ghlas are classic examples of the damage that can be done, and how it can be effectively repaired given adequate skills and resources. Both are Munros, approaching 4000 feet, and the main route up the south-west flank of the lower mountain to a connecting ridge attracts almost 20,000 walkers a year. It was the first NTS property where footpath erosion was taken seriously, and where a ranger was appointed in 1983 to deal with the problem.

Since then more than #100,000 has been spent healing the wound on Beinn Ghlas. Before work started it was a wide gash, now from a distance it is an unobtrusive trail following a zig-zag course up the steepest stretches. Close up, it is a firm and stony path that blends well into re-turfed landscape on either side. A series of side drains and cross-drains channel water away from the trail, and boulders have been placed strategically to deter people from straying onto areas in the process of recovering.

NTS ranger and naturalist Helen Cole stresses the aim is to heal the hills, not to create new facilities for visitors. ``There are dilemmas in this. The Trust gets a lot of criticism from people who don't want any kind of paths or supervision anywhere in wild areas. You are continually asking yourself if you're doing the right thing, but in the end you have to make a decision.''

Given the mounting pressure on this fragile environment, NTS policy appears to be a reasonable compromise. At about 2000 feet, the land is beginning to recover and even a few alpine plants have returned. Cole says: ``Things grow back fairly quickly at this altitude, but once you get above 3500 feet it can take decades for the vegetation to come back.''

This is apparent from the summit of Beinn Ghlas, where the untreated section of Ben Lawers glares balefully across the ridge at hardy souls braving the first autumn gales. The steepest section is virtually a rock face, with only scraps of turf waiting to be torn away by the next walker.

A bedraggled figure picking his way through the debris stops briefly to offer his opinion. David Rowlands, a financial analyst from Sheffield, says he has seen worse in the Peak District. ``But what they've done further down here is very good. It just shows you what can be done if you've got the money and the people to do it. Personally, I think it's about time us walkers pitched in to help, but I'm not sure how it could be done.''

Unfortunately, repairing upland paths is not simply a matter of chucking down a few stones. It is a skilled, labour-intensive, and expensive business. Bob Aitken, the SNH consultant widely regarded as the guru of upland footpath management in Scotland, says: ``Climbers and walkers are highly sensitive about inappropriate and unsightly repairs. It's the high standards that cost money, but it's the high standards that are crucial. Cheap repairs don't look good, and they don't last.''

He estimates average base costs at #20-#30 per metre, but says they can rise to #100 for short sections where there is a need to install drainage, stabilise broken slopes, and re-seed bare soils. But even then, he says, the public is getting value for money. ``We are spending about #50,000 a year on Ben Lomond on repairs that should last for 30 to 40 years on a mountain used by 30,000 people a year. So I think the cost in terms of the numbers benefiting from it is very reasonable.''

Essentially two techniques are used. In one a trench is dug, stones are smashed into it, then smaller stones are packed in and surfaced with gravel and grit. On steeper stretches an ancient technique known as pitching is employed, in which local stones are set or laid into the ground in such a way that part of them are exposed, like an iceberg. The small gaps around them are tightly filled with soil and gravel, and the path is then sown with a mixture of indigenous grasses. The final effect is of a kind of steeply-sloping cobbled street.

It takes about two years of training and experience to master the various skills, after which path repairers in Britain face strenuous, poorly paid, and uncertain careers. Not surprisingly, many of them take their new-found skills overseas. ``There is a high attrition rate in skilled workers,'' says Aitken.

The answer comes back to cash, or rather the lack of it. A recent survey reckoned that hill-walkers and mountaineers are spending at least #164m a year in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, yet total expenditure on upland footpath repairs throughout Britain is running at less than #2m a year. There is general agreement in the hill-walking fraternity that more money should be put into healing the land, but diverse opinions on how it should be done.

``I think there is an argument for encouraging people who use the hills to contribute towards protecting them,'' Aitken says. ``But you can't put turnstiles at the bottom of the hills. Any initiative would have to be voluntary or indirect.''

One idea gaining support is a tourist tax, similar to that levied in Switzerland where a small percentage of accommodation charges goes directly to maintaining local amenities. Another is an ``ecology tax'' on specialist outdoor clothing.

The former Olympic gold medallist Chris Brasher is ahead of the field in this respect by donating substantial ``environmental royalties'' from the profits of his Brasher Boot Company. His largest grant so far was #150,000 to the NTS to help it purchase the Highland estate of West Affric in 1993. Other companies such as Berghaus and Karrimor are following his example, but officials of the Ramblers' Association say more support is needed from equipment suppliers and retailers.

Fund-raising remains a haphazard business based loosely on goodwill. Cash for the five-year project on Ben Lomond has come from the Royal Bank of Scotland, and from a welly boot carried by the NTS ranger on the hill into which walkers put donations. In Skye and Lochalsh, the local footpath trust benefits from collection cans and boxes in pubs and hotels frequented by climbers and walkers. The restoration of Beinn Ghlas was facilitated by an army helicopter transporting rocks and stones from a quarry several miles away.

Even on shoestring budgets, there have been success stories. Horrific erosion of Coire Lagan, the most popular route to the Cuillin Ridge in Skye, has been transformed into a stable, narrow, well-defined path that blends into the landscape. The project, costing less than #50,000, won a merit award this year from the British Upland Footpath Trust.

In a report on similar work at Lochnagar on the Royal Estate at Deeside, however, Mike Newbury of the mountaineering council sounds a warning: ``It was to an extent pre-emptive, that is to say it was tackled whilst much of the peat and vegetation rootstock was still intact, holding the surface and aiding re-colonisation. If the slope had been allowed to become more unstable, restoration would have become considerably more difficult and expensive.

``The current shortfalls in funding may have unfortunate results in this respect.``

It is not yet all doom and gloom in the glens. Cameron McNeish makes the point that there are 277 Munros in Scotland, of which only about a dozen are seriously damaged.

``Usually it's only a very small part of the mountain that is scarred, and what some people see as erosion others don't even notice. But unless people are prepared to put money where their boots are, it's going to get worse. There's no doubt about that.''

Up on the craggy shoulder of Ben Lawers, ranger Helen Cole squints through driving rain at the great ugly gash beneath the summit. ``There's not much we can do about it for the time being,'' she says. ``Our funding has been cut every year since 1991, just when it ought to be increasing.'' As she speaks, one of the last remnants of turf on the slope is inadvertently torn away by a walker, and the wound becomes deeper.

n.TOMORROW Gavin Bell examines how time, tide, and storms are eroding the coastlines of our island.