AIBU to skip the queue at the Snowdon summit?

Exactly!

If touching the trig point matters to you, fair enough (although how do you cope with mountains without a trig point?), just join the queue of people who also care about the trig point.

I think if you want a picture at the top then you should queue but if you are happy to go to the top, take it in and turn around you can skip it! I think this thread opens up the bigger discussion of how frustrating it is watching people have a need to photograph and video everything in a perfect way. Watching reeling in the years from years ago and not a phone or camera in sight. Bring it back!!!!

There are better mountains in Eryri. Yr Wyddfa is often regarded as the ‘sacrificial mountain’. In the sense that all the tourists go there… they are encouraged to do so! It keeps the other mountains clear for people to enjoy.

Queuing for photos is asocial madness and needs to stop. Not just on Snowdon but everywhere. The world doesn't exist so that Instagram can harvest your data and other people aren't obstructions on the photos that enable said harvesting.

Catch yourself on!

So Joe Brown and George Band "DIDNT" climb Kangchenjunga in 1955 because they stopped a few feet from the summit out of respect for local religions?

Yeah right!

A trig point is a COMPLETELY HUMAN MANUFACTURED ARTIFICIAL ADDITION to a mountain.

By your theory "to bag the peak" you must actually do a tap dance on the crucifix on top of Carantouhill or play chess on the cross on the Zugspitz.

And don't get me started on summit cairns!!

I've been fell running since before social media was a thing, so I can very confidently say that this just isn't true. Basically, touching the summit trig/cairn/whatever is the generally accepted measure amongst people who climb mountains a lot as to whether you've actually been to the top of a given mountain. Otherwise you've just been in the general vicinity of the top. Hillary and Tensing couldn't have sacked off the Hillary Step and said 'well we're near enough, we've climbed to well over 8000m so another 50 is neither here nor there'.

Edit: apologies, I now realise I've said exactly the same as the poster above me!

Well, I’ve been running in the mountains since the early 90s and always touched trig points. I used to to do an annual run over Tryfan, the Glyders and then round the horseshoe back to Pen-Y-Pass and we always slapped every trig on the way (and did the leap between Adam and Eve). Any photos would have been a quick snap with an instamatic but I don’t recall anyone bothering.

Good grief! How ridiculous. Why on earth do people bother going there if it's that crowded? That's definitely going on my list of places to be avoided!

Probably the same weirdos who queue in line at a pub bar and tut if anyone goes straight up to the bar.

The steps were only put in to make the top of the cairn and the ‘trig point’ accessible to people with limited mobility. There is no need to use them, you can easily walk/scramble up the side and avoid the steps.

I would go so far as to say that anyone who takes Crib Goch or the Watkin is duty bound to skip the queue.

they need to get one of those big frame things near by with ‘love from Snowdon’ or some such nonsense and the insta idiots will flock there instead.

Maybe they could get a large canvas photo backdrop of the view at the cafe for the Instagram wankers to pose in front of. Then they would get a good picture no matter the weather.

In recent years when travelling I get so annoyed with people more concerned about posing for photos than just actually look g at what’s around them!
I went to Yosemite a few years ago, amazing, but people just standing about for ages posing for photos infront of waterfalls and lakes and meanwhile if you want to just stand there and take in the view you’re shooed out the way. Me and DH were standing admiring a lake and a woman came up and asked us to move out the way so she could have a photo, after she’d done it she said it was OK for us to go back to viewing the lake where we were previously.

So no, I wouldn’t be queueing for an hour to admire the view from the trig point because people are obsessed with their Instagram photos. How many people would be up there if photos were banned like in museums?

Definitely a good idea to have a "quick" queue. A "3 seconds or less" one with no posing allowed - if you can do a selfie without stopping that's fine. Anyone who is going to take their time getting the right shot should definitely queue.

There was a queue when I climbed it 16 years ago, not as long but if you wanted to touch the top trig you queue - difference is no smartphones and visibility under 5m!

Not only that, you can get some perfectly good pictures while stood on the bedrock.

There was a substantial cairn built between 1826 and 1842. It ceased to be an official trig point in 1937 as the (then-new) Clough William-Ellis building got in the way. The official trig point is now the concrete one on Garnedd Ugain. The old cairn was pretty much gone by the 1960s and was rebuilt in 1961. The brass toposcope (what everyone on this thread has been referring to as the "trig point") and the steps onto the cairn were added in 2001.

There is no right to take a picture composed to your satisfaction on a hill. You don’t own the hill for any length of time . If your photo is impacting other people you are in the wrong and should not be taking a photo

I’m doing snowdon next year and I will be skipping any queue. I hike alone and I don’t care for pictures. If anything, I’ll take a quick video touching the trig and leave. Absolutely ridiculous they’d queue for a photo at the trig. They really need to get a grip.

plus, when I was at Whernside for the first time I just edited the people out from behind me on my phone, nice and easy. A lot of my photos from hikes are quick selfies I take, then I have my lunch at the top and leave.

Did a multi peak challenge for charity a few years ago and decided not to queue. Here's my photo from the top, but I'd have rather liked to have been able to touch the trig point so YANBU.

Just for the sake of accuracy (I used to work on that railway), hikers outnumber railway passengers 9-1 over the course of the year. Obviously the railway only runs to the top for half of the year so the numbers will be a bit closer on the days that it is there, but still more hikers.

A lovely sammich? You could follow that up with a nice plate of pissgetti and a packet of cwips. And don't forget desert! LOL LOL LOL

I had this discussion with DH and DD as we shall be that way soon and we decided that .... Well, What's the point? Get to the top, have a drink and a sammich, go down. Queuing to touch the trig? Why on earth would you do that? Seems utterly nonsensical to me.

I’ve always touched the trig point on a mountain. Seems strange not to want to do that, like running a marathon and stopping just before the finish line.
I queued at the top of Ben Nevis. You can’t really have more than 2 people at the trig point. I had to touch the trig point after such a gruelling walk. Because I’d queued, I felt like I’d earned a photo (this did NOT go on social media) compounding the problem.
I’d have been peeved if anyone had walked past me. Might be a bit different to Snowden though because you’d literally block the route for the queuers at Ben Nevis.

I disagree it's just for social media, I wanted a photo at the trig point/trig points on other mountains to prove I'd done it decades ago before social media.

I was there on Saturday. There were kind of two queues to touch /photograph the trig point (one queue was more orderly than the other) but I didn't see anyone getting a photo of just them. There were always multiple people in the photo. No-one seemed to be complaining from what I could hear.

I joined the less orderly queue, got a photo of me touching the trig point in about five minutes with a huddle of others in the background, then took a separate photo of the view elsewhere.

Didn't seem to be any bother at all.

If you want a solo photo maybe go up there at 5 am!