Walkers on the Miners' Track, which is now a little smoother, if infuriating. Photo: Denis Egan

Let me, dear reader, take you to a place you may never have visited before.

It is a dark place where the whole world seems out to get you; where the sun never shines, and even if it does, it makes life unbearably hot; where the pot is invariably half empty.

It is: the Daily Mail. Not an environ for the faint-hearted. Every sentence is laden with doom and threat and hyperbole is king.

And what navigational error led us into this malign corner of Britain? Well, there’s a little storm brewing over Wales’s highest peak. Or at least, there is if the Mail is to be believed.

While a glasshouse dweller should always be cautious when picking up the first few pebbles, let’s take a measured analysis of the latest furore that is enveloping ‘the second highest mountain in the UK’ – Mount [sic] Snowdon.

Yes, I know; all of you who foolishly trudged up Ben Macdui, thinking you were bagging the mountain you thought had that status, may find the Mail’s claim a little puzzling. Many more will find the faux-alarm induced by 100m of asphalt even more surprising.

For, yes, the Snowdonia National Park Authority has been charged, tried and found guilty in the Court of Associated Newspapers of the heinous crime against Wilderness Law of laying the said length of the black stuff on three sections of the Miners’ Track which wends its way from Pen y Pass up the eastern flank of Snowdon, which is in fact the 57th highest mountain in the UK.

As we all know, Snowdon is renowned for its ‘wild slopes, steep ridges and treacherous screes’ – those double-crossing screes are not to be trusted. According to the Mail, it attracts ‘experienced mountaineers from across the world who want to pit their climbing skills against its rugged routes’. No arguing with that; Dave MacLeod, probably Britain’s leading trad climber – oops hyperbole slipping in there, it’s catching – has just repeated his E9 6c climb on The Indian Face on Clogwyn Du’r Arddu round the other side of the hill.

But, as the report howls, ‘the 3,560ft mountain just got a whole lot tamer after a Tarmac pathway was laid on one of the ancient routes’. Yes, on the Miner’s Track. Snowdon is no A’Mhaighdean, set in its own wilderness. It’s an industrial museum set in scenery, with the remnants of former workings sitting hand in hand with the natural beauty of Crib Goch.

But, as mountaineer Ellis Jones, 34, of Gwynedd said in the story: “Snowdon is a mountain not a theme park for children. It defies commonsense. Next they’ll be wanting to put a lift up Everest or filling in the Grand Canyon. It is one of the most preposterous things I’ve heard of.”

Who knows, they might even build a railway up the hill and stick a big cafe at the top of it! God forbid! Damn, now there’s a shower of exclamation marks raining down as well.

Gwynfryn Roberts, 54, from Porthmadog, is quoted in the report as saying: “The Miners’ Track is not an easy path to the summit and making the approach easier is going to encourage inexperienced people to think it’s as easy as this all the way to the top.”

No, it’s certainly not an easy route to the top: it arguably only goes as far as Glaslyn or, at a push, its junction with the Pyg Track, still some 335m – more than 1,000ft – short of the summit. And certainly it’s a hell of a lot easier a route than, say Crib Goch.

But Mr Roberts has a point: it could just encourage the jeans-clad daytrippers to push their luck and carry on up to the summit. Except – and here’s the rub – what has actually happened is that three small sections of the 2½km track have been given an asphalt base before being covered in rock chippings. It has been levelled a little and given a treatment which should make it a bit more durable.

Emyr Williams, director of land management at the SNPA, is quoted: “The path stretches for 2½km and the only part which has been Tarmacked is three separate stretches totalling only 100m.

An even smoother route is via the Snowdon Mountain Railway. Photo Andrew Farquhar

“This has then been topped with crushed stone to make it look like the rest of the path which has been levelled because it had become badly eroded.” So don’t expect to be able to drive your car up to Llyn Llydaw. And, there is a whiff of elitism about ‘mountaineers’’ claims on keeping the peak to themselves. Along with Cairn Gorm and Aonach Mòr, Snowdon is one of the few British mountains on which the less mobile can get the sense of wonder we hillgoers appreciate. Who’s to deny the less able or adventurous a glimpse of Snowdon’s summit peak, something denied from Pen y Pass?

The works don’t seem to have perturbed Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team secretary Ian Henderson, who told the paper: “Snowdon is many things to many people. To climbers Snowdon is a mountain first and foremost while to others it’s a theme park.

“Tarmacking part of the path is a necessary evil to make the mountain more accessible. Perhaps we’ll see fewer calls to twisted ankles as a result of this but we’ll have to wait and see.”

It’s interesting to chart the development of this type of story. The germ seems to be the Daily Post’s report today headlined ‘Anger as part of Snowdon path is Tarmacked,’ which has the same quotes, including Jed Thornby, 43, of Castleford, who is worried about disabled people. “What about mobility scooters? Will mountain rescue teams be on permanent call to retrieve people after their batteries run out?”

The Associated title has taken the Post’s slightly more measured tone, sprinkled it with Maildust and slipped in an accusation of political correctness. And, no doubt, others will pick up the story and run it a little further. At least there will be less chance of them tripping up on the lovely, smooth Miners’ Track.

Meanwhile, thousands of boots will pound the stone chippings, blithely unaware that the evil black stuff lurks just below their Vibram. Hundreds more will disgorge from the puffing loco in their tracksuits, and wonder why those odd folk with red faces have walked all the way up to the Hafod Eryri cafe when they could have let the train take the strain. And, maybe, the Llanberis team will have just a fewer interrupted evenings tending to sprained limbs.

And, somewhere, a journalist is looking for the next huge controversy as the silly season begins.

Meanwhile, if any grough reader should witness the ‘Fury over Tarmac’ the Mail promises, do try to get a picture. We’d love to a mountaineer screaming at the hallowed ground of the slopes of Yr Wyddfa.