Donegal Rock Climbing. Unique Ascent: Tororragaun

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.