North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Heartbreak ridge

Picture is of part of the Maumturk mountain range, with Lough Inagh in the foreground. The building at the lake edge is Lough Inagh Lodge, and here is a photograph taken from there, looking towards where I took the picture above (if you know what I mean). I was standing on the leftmost peak.

We were feeling fairly pleased with ourselves when we got back to the Ben Lettery Hostel, having just completed the Derryclare Horseshoe last Friday. What better preparation for the Maumturk Challenge (this Saturday) ? Until our leader pointed out that the Maumturk Challenge is the equivalent of doing the Horseshoe, followed by climbing Carrauntoohil. Oh oh.

Update 15th April 2007:Phew! Got up at 3.20 am - collected my fellow walkers and got the starting point [at Corcog] by 5am. It was still dark when we set off at 5.20 - in fact, there was a beautiful, starry sky and the only other light available was the dancing procession of lights from the torches of climbers as they set off up the side of Corcog.

Conditions were near perfect for climbing, and for the first couple of hours, the views were simply spectacular, including the sunrise. 106 walkers entered and I think less than 10 dropped out over the entire course, usually through injury/old wounds playing up/etc - nothing serious. Last year, it rained continuously and many people got lost and had to drop out. There are cut-off points along the way - if you don't pass them by a certain time, you have to stop. Last year in the rain, less than 30 (out of 200) finished the course.

This year, visibility was perfect. It was nearly seven before my group finished - we lost about ninety minutes at the end of the course, when one of our number picked up a knee injury. Rather than stop, she used a couple of borrowed walking sticks as crutches and hobbled from Binn Bhan, the aptly named Coll of Despondency and finally Leenane Hill. No quitters in the Galway Walking Club! At the bottom, as the setting sun lit up Killary Harbour and Leenane village in golden light, we munched on sandwiches and tea laid on by the organisers. Food never tasted so good.

The one improvement I would suggest is a water drop somewhere along the way. The hot day meant carrying a lot of water - if it were possible to pick up water at Leaba Padraig or Cnoc na hUilleann, it would have eased the burden somewhat. Congratulations to Miko Keane [of the Galway Walking Club], who finished the course in seven hours flat - that's a damn near unbelievable 30 minutes per hill. Kudos too to the unnamed Dublin hiker who left twenty euro at the finish point to buy a round of drinks for the lads at a checkpoint that had looked after him. And congrats to the NUIG Mountaineering Club who organised the whole thing and looked after us so well.

The NUIG page for the walk is here, but the best description of the Maumturk walk is on Simon Stewart's site, which is probably the most detailed walking site in Ireland.

twelve, bens, derryclare, maumturk, spring, maamturk,galway, ireland, irishblogs, photoblogs, photography, galwayblogs, standing stone, monasette, Canon, 350D, april, 2007

Posted by Monasette at April 12, 2007 07:08 PM