A better path for pilgrims prevents erosion
Locals’ bid to save fragile Croagh Patrick vegetation
CROAGH Patrick is slowly being eroded by 120,000 hikers a year and now local farmers and concerned organisations are fighting back.
A stakeholders group has hired experts to build a footpath up the mountain to keep walkers from tramping all over the vegetation.
Much of the famous reek is actually privately owned with 46 shareholders in the commonage, 11 of whom are active farmers. And they claim they have lost a huge amount of land which has been destroyed by the heavy footfall.
‘The path has gone to an awful width in places. It has taken at least 50 acres or more,’ local farmer and shareholder John Grady tells RTÉ One’s Ear To The Ground, which airs on Thursday at 7pm.
‘A lot of it is erosion and rock and scree.
People venturing off the trail destroy the land
It is getting damaged and it would be nice to get it back to what it needs to be, a mountain path instead of a scar on the mountain.’
Mountain path expert Matt McConway, who is supervising the new path, described how people venturing off the established trail eventually destroy the surrounding land.
‘It’s quite fragile at times and when people walk on it, after a period of time, it basically degrades to such an extent that it can’t hold together and blows away in the wind.
‘You’re left with the mineral underneath and there’s nothing to hold that in place.
‘And eventually it’s very uncomfortable to walk on so people then move back on to the vegetation again and then the process continues and that erodes away...’
Locals realised something drastic would have to be done after the 2015 annual Reek Sunday Pilgrimage was cancelled due to heavy rain. Despite appeals, 5,000 people climbed the mountain, causing significant damage to the path and surrounding habitat.
Shortly afterwards a local stakeholders’ group was formed in an effort to save the pathway.
The group hired footpath repair specialists who are now building, by hand, a stone pathway in the worst affected areas, using the scree on the mountain. They now hope every climber will use the path.
‘We are not going to force people to use the path but I think the majority of people will use it because they will know it’s a safer option, it’s easier to walk on.
‘The long-term goal is for the habitat that used to be here to start recovering again.’
Helen Lawless, a spokeswoman for Mountaineering Ireland, said she hoped a situation would not arise whereby quotas for walkers climbing Croagh Patrick would have to be introduced.
‘It would be difficult for people to accept restrictions such as that,’ she said.
‘But the positive way of controlling the flow of people is work like we are seeing here on Croagh Patrick.’
She added: ‘It’s provided healing for people and now people are starting to heal the erosion scar on Croagh Patrick which is really welcome.’