Volunteers taking part in a clean up on Ben Nevis at the weekend found less rubbish than usual but noticed an increase in graffitti scrawled on the marker cairns.
The litter pick group from the John Muir Trust (JMT) collected nine bin bags of rubbish from the summit area of the Ben. The good weather gave the team lots of time to search widely around the summit area, in marked contstrast to earlier clean ups which have taken place with snow still on the ground. The JMT says the hotspots for gathering litter such as the summit shelter and the peace cairn had their predictable collection of litter but in general the path and summit were better than usual.
However the JMT said that one worrying addition this year has been the amount of graffiti appearing on the cairns on the way to the summit, either scratched or written onto the stones. Wherever possible weathered stones were used to face these cairns but there are still some surfaces light enough to be attractive to the passing graffiti artists.