‘Exponential’ rise in mountain rescues threatens to overwhelm services as social media fuels risk

‘If it carries on like this, we won’t be able to respond’

Every year, hundreds of people have to be rescued from Mount Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), more than any other mountain in the UK, but rescuers have warned that numbers of callouts are rising to unsustainable levels and are partly being driven by social media.

Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team – the busiest in the country – has seen rising numbers of unprepared young men routinely being rescued.

In October, the team had to make 33 rescues, including 18 full team deployments, and in November, 22 incidents occurred with 15 full team deployments to rescue people.

With the arrival of winter, many of Snowdonia’s iconic routes such as the Llanberis Path to reach the summit of Mount Snowdon, and the spectacular tooth-like Crib Goch (Red Ridge) become increasingly dangerous due to snow and ice, and much shorter days. Meanwhile, their appeal is growing as people upload footage of their climbs to social media.

Searches for Crib Goch, Snowdonia and Llanberis Path return hundreds of videos on TikTok and Instagram, many showing precarious climbs along the jagged ridge of Crib Goch, with its sheer drops on either side.

Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team said a third of all of the callouts were to assist people who had got into difficulties on Crib Goch, and of these, all of them were males under 24.

They warned that the route is a Grade 1 scramble, which “becomes far more serious in winter conditions”.

To tackle the ridge, the team warned that it requires experience, appropriate equipment, good weather judgement and a realistic understanding of your own abilities.

Jurgen Dissmann, Chair of Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team said: “We’ve had multiple callouts through November and now another at the start of December for people getting into serious difficulty on Crib Goch — often because the terrain has been underestimated or experience overestimated. At this time of year everything becomes far more serious. Winter weather, high winds, storms and low visibility can turn a manageable day into something extremely dangerous very quickly.

“It’s important to understand that there will be times when we simply can’t reach you. If the weather is too severe, we may have to wait until conditions improve, and that delay could be long. We are highly trained and experienced, but rescuer safety will always be a major part of our decision making.”

He added: “Please make sure your experience, skills, fitness and equipment match the route and the conditions — especially in winter.”

A hiker crosses a narrow ridge in Snowdonia National Park, Wales, where rescues call outs have shot up (Getty/iStock)

One TikToker, a fitness instructor from London, named Nathan Buru, saw a huge spike in views after uploading a video of getting into difficulties and being rescued from Crib Goch last month, but he also used the video to warn others not to do what he and his friends did and underestimate the weather and the scale of the mountain.

In the video he describes how he got into “a very sticky situation, and almost died”.

“The clouds were engulfing the mountains, but we thought yeah, it’s the norm.”

“The higher we got, the more intense and more extreme the weather was getting.”

By the time they reached the summit, Mr Buru had developed severe cramp. “My leg stopped working,” he said in the video, unable to move amid high winds and lashing rain.

After calling 999 it took over 4 hours for the rescue team to locate and reach them, by which time night had fallen.

“When the mountain rescue team arrived, we couldn’t have wished for more professionalism in that moment,” Mr Buru added. “If they hadn’t come that night, I’d be dead.”

In a YouTube video published last month highlighting the challenges posed to mountain rescue teams as visitor numbers rise, Mr Dissmann said the number of fatalities have also gone up in Snowdonia.

“We used to have about 4-6 fatalities a year, but this year we’ve already gone over that. Just in the last couple of months we’ve had three.”

If the rise in callouts keeps climbing, then Mr Dissmann said “we are not going to actually cope with it”.

“The rise is exponential now. There are so many jobs and they’re all serious – people falling off the ridge or collapsing. All that co-ordination becomes really tricky to manage, and at some point if it all carries on like it is, then we will not be able to respond. We will be able to get to people, but if you’re just a bit tired or a bit hurty ankle, rather than falling off the ridge, it might take us 5 hours to get to you, not two hours.”