Charity hikers booed for skipping Yr Wyddfa summit queue
Charity hikers Jamie Richardson and Richard Thiedeman were booed at Yr Wyddfa after taking separate routes to avoid a summit queue they compared to Alton Towers.
Booing greeted two charity hikers at the summit of Yr Wyddfa after they took separate routes to avoid what they described as “Alton Towers-like” queues and tap the trig point before moving on.
Jamie Richardson, 32, and Richard Thiedeman, 34, had already climbed Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike as part of a Three Peaks Challenge for their friend Thomas Hynes, who has motor neurone disease. They reached Yr Wyddfa at 05:00 BST on Sunday, after travelling from Lincolnshire to Scotland and then England before arriving in Wales to finish the last leg of their 24-hour attempt.
The pair said the climb itself felt welcoming. On the way up, they described the atmosphere as “friendly” and said walkers were in “good spirits”. Some people offered them a lift from a separate car park to the start point, while others gave donations and kind words as they made the final ascent.
Richardson said there is no policing of queueing at the summit and that people move up by free will. Thiedeman said they were physically exhausted and sunburned, and only needed to touch the summit point and leave. But when they bypassed the line of walkers waiting their turn at the top, they were met with jeers.
The argument around the trig point reflects a wider pressure on Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, where the summit sits 1,085m, or 3,560ft, above sea level. Eryri National Park Authority says more than 600,000 people hike Yr Wyddfa every year, making it the park’s most popular summit and one of Britain’s busiest mountains.
That popularity has changed the social fabric of the mountain. Reports over the years have described waits of more than an hour to reach the trig point, while recent scenes have been likened to a carnival atmosphere as crowds stretched down the mountain during busy holiday periods. Yr Wyddfa is also home to rare wildlife, including the Snowdon lily and the Snowdon beetle, and most of the land around it is farmland with mountain farms.
For Richardson and Thiedeman, the episode was a sharp reminder that when an iconic summit becomes a mass destination, even a charity climb can turn into a dispute over etiquette, access and who gets to claim the view first.
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