Ireland's Newest Climbing Location
Taking
advantage of the outstanding late summer in the last few days in western
Donegal, paddled out for a visit to the rarely visited Tororragaun
Island.
Tororragaun Film
Tororragaun is
a 22 metre high rocky granite island living in the channel between Gola and
Umfin Islands four kilometres off the Gweedore coast. The island is effectively
guarded on all sides by Gola Island quality Granite sea cliffs and off course
the potential for climbing new routes is enormous. Running through the centre
of the island is a huge, and I do mean HUGE, sea washed water spout. It is
difficult to imagine the size of this water spout but it would easily
accommodate a million tons of sea water at a time. During his visit Iain free
soloed (unroped) five new 60 foot rock climbs on the seaward face of the
island. These are the first recorded rock climbs on the island are in the
Tororragaun free guidebook is Tororragaun Guidebook Webpage.
This rocky outcrop has been on the to do list for a couple of years and only now with a shiney sit on top and an indian summer the new routes account has been open on its seaward face. :-)
There is no fresh water on the island and pretty
much every horizontal surface is birded as this is home to approx. 500 nesting
pairs of Fulmar and a token amount of Gannet.
Access to the island by sea kayak from Port
Arthur Pier at Map ref B798284 on the Gweedore Coast. Landing on Tororragaun is
not without a certain degree of rocky uncertainty as there are no easy landing
beaches, coves or recesses. The easiest landing is at the eastern tip of the
island onto rock sea level ledges. With a west sea running the island provides
excellent lee and this eastern tip has large non-tidal ledges for kayak storage.
Gweedore from Tororragaun
Gweedore Islands
Tororragaun Arch
Rock Climbing on Tororragaun
