WALES
Crib Goch
Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) is one of the world’s busiest mountains, and Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) takes up the task–albeit completely voluntarily–of watching over those who seek its summit. They typically receive over 200 callouts each year.
Unsurprisingly, one of the key black spots on the Snowdon massif is the knife-edge ridge of Crib Goch. Llanberis MRT spokesman Miles Hill said: “Most call-outs to Crib Goch are to people who have underestimated it and become ‘cragfast’ – too scared to continue. At the other end of the scale, falls usually result in deaths. We respond to around 12 cragfast incidents a year on Crib Goch, and eight fatalities a year on Snowdon generally; a couple of those are usually falls from Crib Goch.”
The trickiest sections of the Grade 1 scramble are a particularly narrow section where the ridge pinches to a foot or so wide with plunging drops either side, and the ‘rock step’. “Some people try to escape by wandering off the ridge,” added Miles. “This is a bad idea because the terrain below the ridge is loose and steep.”
