Donegal Island Adventure

 An Sho, with many cunning plans for a wee bit of an adventure over the May Bank holiday weekend, the weather gods were having it large with a spot of low cloud and a hint of wind as the annual Climbfest, kicked off on Cruit Island. There was an excellent turn out with climbers travelling from all over the country to attend. A new wall got developed with routes from VS to E2 and several other new lines recorded on the existing crags of Golfers Crag and Farmhouse Buttress. Once again excellent work by Alan Tees and his team on another well organised Climbfest weekend.

Tyrolean Traverse Film

Donegal Climbfest

Climbfest Camp Fire

 On the Monday of the Climbfest as the crowds were beginning to thin in the low laying crowd an altogether smaller team of International players donned the thermals and went in search of vertical pleasure. A team of five from Singapore, and two teams of two from Omagh and Dublin went to play. We split into two sides with one side taking to the sea and the other trying to avoid it. :-) One Side heading to Traderg wall and descended to sea level where Neptune was very much in attendance and with a modicum of white watered rage we made a team ascent of "4 April Fools."

 Alas by this time the sea was by now bouncing proper and so we headed to Albatross Zawn to the shelter from Neptunes Ire. The Albatross Zawn provided excellent sheltered rock with all players getting up several routes and Princess Katy taking the yellow jersey on her ascent of a VS jamming crack as the sun came out.

Happy Ladies

Cruit Island rock Climbing

Donegal Sea Kayaking

Cruit Island Rock Climbing

Rope Coiling Lessons

Rock Climbing in the Sun

Topping out in the Sun

Cruit Camp Fire

  The morning after the day before and a rapid turn around in the weather, all hill walking plans were abandoned to favour of a Tyrolean Traverse across the Albatross Zawn. 

 "A Tyrolean Traverse is a method of crossing through free space between two high points on a rope without a hanging cart or cart equivalent." to quote Wikipedia.

 The rigging for the a Tyrolean especially one that spans a 50m+ stretch of sea takes a wee while to set up and involves a lot of prior planning if you wish to avoid swimming. :-) An hour or so later and 14 independent anchors, 100m of semi-static, 120m of dynamic, 20+ HMS karabiners and an assortment of softwear, our creation was ready for airtime and so John Mallon and myself took flight to test the fear factor of the beast.  

 It was now the turn of our international climbing team and so one by one everyone took flight across the zawn. This was a most excellent way to finish a four day stay on Cruit island. 

 This two day adventure holiday was organised in conjunction with Mark, Donna & John of 4 Elements NI 

Tyrolean Traverse

Mid Air Acrobatics

The Exit Point

Tyrolean Across the Zawn

Cruit Island Tyrolean Traverse

A Return of Spring in Ireland

 An Sho, with the snow finally retreating upwards in the Irish uplands and Spring has made a return in the form of torrential rain and hurricane winds. But all is not lost to the elements as the ever dry Cruit Island has came up trumps over the last two weeks with 4 different groups of people requiring instruction into the vertical world. Four different groups with four very different remits and goals, ranging from first time rock climbers through to a couple of gentlemen heading to distant lands for something very spicy indeed.

Rock Climbing Courses in Donegal

A happy climber

A busy Donegal Beach

Jock's Wall, Cruit Island

Jock's Wall

Crack 'n' Slab HS 4b

 It's been a funny old couple of weeks with a couple of near misses with nearly appearing on television and very nearly jumping out of a plane. But it's the hits that count and the very final touches are being added to the very soon to be released Donegal guidebook, with graded lists, graded colour bands, an introduction page and a major rechecking of many of the routes and grades. 

 There are now 17 free PDF downloadable Donegal rock climbers guidebooks on the Unique Ascent Website, I've just got the Inishowen PDF to finish and upload and they are done. There are several further definitive guides to be finished such as Owey, Tory and Arranmore Island but alas I still require calm seas to get a few of the sea cliff topos pictures.  

 Got out to play with the depressingly talented noble brother Kevin McGee and another three new routes were added to Cruit island's New Dawn Wall, and with very strong rumours that noble brother Hugh Hennessy has been quietly filling in a few gaps on the island over the last few weeks, Cruit Island is far from the end of it's development stage. :-) 

Donegal Winter Adventures

 And so, Donegal has had it's 5 days of winter conditions and the ambient air temperature has shot back up to low teens and it seems very unlikely that the snow and ice will return to the uplands of the county, this winter. Just before the end of our short winter I ran a mountain skills course in Donegal and caught the last of the snow and ice in the North West of Ireland.

Donegal Winter Mountains

A Frozen Glenveagh

Ireland Winter Mountains

 As soon as the mountains were back to being green again, it was over to Cruit Island to run a mid February, weekends Rock Improvers Course. Since 1st January 2013 we have been on Cruit four times leading routes up to HVS in glorious sunshine and on one occasion it was mentioned it was beginning to get too hot. :-)

Donegal rock Climbing Course

 It is also the time of years to stand in front of large groups of people and talk, this winter I have did talks to the Irish Mountaineering Club in Dublin and at UCC for Kerry Climbing. Doing talks is a surreal activity and pretty much as scary as soloing a sea stack. The sponsor for the Cork talk was Alpine Sports.ie, have a wee look at their site for very competitive prices their huge range of mountaineering equipment.

Cork Mountaineering Talk

 No sooner back from Cork and it was into the Donegal hills once again, this time spring was very much in attendance.

 Ran a Mountain Leader Training Week based out of Ardara with 5 troopers on the course and a huge mixture of weather in the five days of training. 

Mountain Leader Rope Work

Mountain Leader Client Care

Mountain Leader Group Management

Mountain Leader Steep Ground

ML Expedition Campsite

Tormore Island 

 All in all a very varied two weeks in the great outdoors and with the diary pretty much full for March there are a few perhaps more unusual activities in the pipeline! :-) 

  

Donegal Winter Climbing

 Early January 2010 six hardy souls left the road end at the old church in Dunlewy and entered the the winter wonderland that was the Donegal mountains. After nearly six weeks of almost continual sub Zero temperatures and arctic tundra driving conditions the mountains of Derryveagh Donegal were in immaculate winter climbing condition.

Poison Glen in Winter 2010

 We split into three pairs of climbers and with each of us donning a full winter climbing kit each team picked a prime unclimbed route up three different faces in the Poison Glen. Alan Tees and myself climbed a 450m ice fall up the Bearna Buttress, with several grade IV ice pitches this route was an outstanding winter monster up one of Irelands highest mountain crags. 

Donegal winter climbing Guide

Pitch 5 Poison Glen climbing

Pitch 7ish 

Topping out in Poison Glen

 Anyways, three years later to the day, Jan 2013, four young (and not so young) men arrived on Cruit Island for a days winter climbing. This time there was no technical axes, no G14 crampons, no sub zero temperatures and no down jackets, there was outstanding summer sunshine.

Winter Climbing in Donegal

Traderg Wall, Cruit Island

Cruit Island Rock Climbing

Donegal Winter Sun

 And so, a day of warm Granite, lapping blue seas and sunny skies was the order of the day! The same day three years apart and at polar opposites of winter climbing conditions! :-)

Donegal Climbers Guide Books

Just finished guiding a week long walking tour of Ireland following the sunshine through the counties of Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal, Londonderry, Down, Louth and Dublin.

   Northern Donegal

The Rosses

Glenveagh

Muckish Mountain

Down Hill Strand Antrim

Fair Head

 I've updated the climbers guide to Cruit island adding 6 new crags and over 50 new routes, there are of course still many gaps and potential for new routes especially in the extreme grades. :-)

Cruit Island Guide

 Whilst I was chained to the laptop I updated the Donegal Sea stack guide making it a tad more interactive by live linking all the u Tube films to each stack and linking each stack to the appropriate section in the on line guide. There is also several new stacks and another 20 or so new routes added.

Donegal Sea Stack Guide

  The remaining 24 sections, 2000 routes, 300 topos of the Donegal guide are currently being PDF'd, edited and shuffled into place to make a working guide.

 The finished guide will, I feel be my legacy of a mid life crisis! :-)

A week in Donegal.

 With the sun shining and the Eastern Atlantic flat calm it would have been rude not to have been out seeking vertical pleasure in Donegal's great outdoors.
 Paid a wee visit to Torboy with Wolfgang Schuessler, this lonely wee island sits off the seaward tip of Cruit Island looking out to the northern end of the spectacular Owey Island.

Arranmore & Owey Islands from Torboy summit

Errigal Mountain & The Rosses from Torboy

 Accces to Torboy is by a 100m sea passage from a wee sandy beach just off the golf course. The sea channel out to Torboy is open to both south west and north west sea motion and is normally home to huge rollers coming in from both these directions, but for the past month Neptune has been kind and the sea passage was a mill pond!

 Arrived on the island and explored the northern facing cliffs, I had previously paid two visits over the past two years to the island and climbed 8 new routes on these occasions. After a through recce we calculated that there was potential for at least another 40 sub extreme new routes and so we began to climb.

Wolfgang on belay (note the sunnies!)

The zawn

 We climbed 5 new routes at the western tip of the islands north face and another in a deep narrow zawn facing out to Owey Island.

 Wolfgang was keen for some deep water soloing and so he abseiled down to the base of the unclimbed landward face of Torboy, whilst I paddled out to an offshoot skerrie and held the towels and camera.

Wolfgang abseiling

Deep water soloing (Oscar observes)

Post crux and committed

 Deep water soloing is the sport of climbing with out ropes or equipment above deep water and is an activity only for the very experienced. I am unsure what is more nerve wrecking, actually doing the climb or watching someone who is climbing? Thankfully Wolfgang stayed dry and we returned to mainland Cruit as a light easterly shower blew over the golf course.

 I was back on Cruit mainland the following four days running a Single Pitch Award Training Course and an intermediate rock climbing course with most of the participants visiting the island for their first time and all planning further visits.