Donegal Rock Climbing 2015

The Story so far in 2015..........

 So far in 2015 it has been a very mixed bag of weather and sea conditions with a 3 week tropical heatwave at the start of April to the thunder storms and the near return of winter in mid May. But no matter what the weather brings we have been out to play pretty much every day, with visits to every main climbing location in Donegal so far this year and all, I hasten to add, in glorious sunshine.

Owey Island Rock Climbing

Owey Island Rock Climbing

Tory Island Rock Climbing

 On a wee visit from the U.K. Ian Parnell, Ben Wilkinson, Jon Winter and Henry Jepson made hay while the Donegal sun shone with visits to Owey Island, Sail Rock, Lurking Fear and Cruit Island. With new routes by the Holy Jaysus Wall on Owey and Lurking Fear Stack, the sea and the weather played ball.

Cnoc na Mara trio

Lurking Fear Stack

 No visit to to the cliffs of SW Donegal is complete without a look at Sail Rock. We arrived mid afternoon and after an abseil rigging and a 100m rope uncoiling session two teams were at the base of the face. Ian and Ben going for Mainmast and Jon and Henry nipping up Roaring Forties.

Sail Rock

Sail Rock in evening sun

  In classic bouncefest fashion and with a modicum of mild concern five different stacks have been climbed fourteen times so far in 2015. A considerable number of mainstream climbing press have had forays into the shady world of sea stacks climbing. It is an entirely different sport taking people onto sea stacks whom you know are going to publish their thoughts in well read publications. Taking someone who has never climbed a stack before (and in most cases never climbed before) onto a nautical summit through white water rage and into the pits of hate is a bit of a mind blower and it never ceases to be enormous fun.

   Sea Stack Climbing

The Sturrall Headland

Donegal Sea Stack

 Off course, sea stack climbing is not all about The Pits of Hate and Davie Jones Locker it also has a much lighter side and when Gaia and Neptune allow, a day out on a nautical summit will be a most relaxed affair with close encounters with many sea creatures in their natural habitat and a visit to your inner self. 

  

The End's of the Earth Sea Stack

Sea Stack Summit View 

 When not out playing I currently spend far too much time lying under a laptop editing the future Donegal Guidebook. A couple of months ago I thought it was finished alas my knowledge of publishing matters was sadly lacking and as it turned out there was still much to do. Where Dave Flanagan and myself are at the moment is we have approx 2/3rds of the book complete. As it is a select guide and covering the entire county what crags and routes to include was always going to be tricky but that is done and what we are doing now is all the nitty gritty editing that I did not realise had to be done. :-( Below are a couple of screenshots of finished pages, Gola island and Muckross as random samples.

 Donegal Guidebook Screenshot: Gola

Donegal Guidebook Screenshot: Muckross

 One of the great ironies of writing a guidebook is that even before it is published new crags and new routes are being found and climbed, that there is simply not room to include in a select guide to the county. So in essence you spend an evening editing a crag and the next day you go out climb a new route thus making your previous nights editing out of date. :-) Below is a couple of shots of Beyond the Ends of the Earth Crag, the first being a new two star route climbed with a couple of America visitors to the county last week. I95 take the centre line up the highest part of the crag at about 30m long and graded Hard Severe.

 Donegal Rock Climbing

Donegal Rock Climbing

 Living in such a fickle climate so close to the Eastern Atlantic it is always a case of good prior planning as to where to play out on the almost endless vertical mediums found around Co Donegal. 

 Sunset at Muckross Head

Donegal Rock Climbing Guidebook 2015

update from 9th Feb 2015 Donegal Guidebook 2015

 And sho, following on from the above post and where we were at three weeks ago, there has been a change or three to the original cunning plan.

 The Donegal Rock Climbing Guidebook 2015 is now a 352 page select guide to the entire county and covers every uber classic route from Muckross Head to Malin Head. What has been done is to take the two volumes I edited over the winter and which weighed in at near 700 pages and dissect them into a single select guide. (for information on the two volumes see above link)

 This has been done and we are now at the getting my amateur Indesign bothering guide to a proper publisher for the transition to a book. Step forth Noble Brother Dave Flannagan and Three Rock Books, Dave is now on board for a wee bit (lot) of Indesign wisdom and has been signed by Mountaineering Ireland to get this guidebook to a printer friendly state. 

 This is a massive relief to my good self as I took the production of this project as far as I could and without the necessary further publishing skills I always knew a dead end was in sight.

 What Dave and myself are currently doing is sorting each chapter at a time. The routes, crags and content is all ready decided with the guide now having 5 distinct chapters (from South to North) and each chapter split into localised areas. This is off course, the fine tuning stage and it is this attention to detail that makes or breaks a guidebook. Below are a couple of screen shots from the five chapters and gives an idea of where we are are at present. :-)

The five chapters are: 

South Donegal

        

Muckross Rock Climbing

South West

End's of the Earth Crag

West

Owey Island Rock Climbing

Mountains

The Bingorms

North

Cnoc na Affrain

Tory Island

   

Donegal Rock Climbing Guidebook 2015

Donegal Guidebook 2015

 The future volume 1 Rock Climbers guidebook to Donegal is currently in it's final stages of proof reading and grammar correction, to say it has been a bit epic getting the project to this stage, would be an understatement of biblical proportions. Gathering the new route information from lines completed since the previous guide involved 100s of e-mails and PMs to many different climbers mostly following vague rumours and whispers. This information was used to build the free on-line PDFs for each section and location found around the county, Donegal on-line guide.

 Due to the vast and dis-connected nature to almost 3000 of the recorded rock climbs in Co. Donegal it was necessary to first decide how much rock to actually put into a guidebook. It eventually made sense to produce two guides each detailing two very separate climbing mediums and locations. 

Volume 1

 The first guide covers Belshade to Tory Island by simply following the coastline clockwise and jumping on and off and island or three. This volume covers vast areas of new locations, crags and islands. Having been heavily involved in the development of many of these areas it made the process both very easy and very difficult to decide what to include/exclude. For example, having met an angel at the base of a remote sea stack on a solo first ascent mission, does this influence the inclusion of the stack in a guidebook? Thankfully this stack provides a world class rock climb, so the decision to include was an easy one to make.

 An Bhuideal Sea Stack Film

Volume 2
 In the second guidebook we travel inland and visit the uplands of the county in both summer and winter. With visits to Ireland’s largest mountain crag and Ireland’s longest ice climb both of which live in the Poison Glen in the Derryveagh Mountains. We then head north over Errigal and Muckish Mountains to Kerrykeel. Our final destination is Malinhead at Ireland’s most northerly point on the Inishowen Peninsula.

Muckross Rock Climbing

Owey Island Rock Climbing

 Volume 1 covers a vast collection of areas on many different mediums, starting on the established two mountain granite venues in the Bluestack Mountains, Belshade and Eglish Valley. We then simply follow the coastline clockwise to Tory Island. The locations around the coast of South and West Donegal contain a perfect mix of previously published venues such as Muckross, Gola Island and Malinbeg. Over fifty percent of the guidebook is previously unpublished information on locations and routes such as Ends of the Ends Crag, and the Slievetooey Coast. Where perhaps the largest change in routes from previous Donegal guides are on Cruit, Owey and Tory Islands where development since the previous guide has been a bit prolific. These sections are much larger by a country mile than any of the previous guidebooks to the county. And finally there are off course the sea stacks, with far too many climbed stacks to possibly ever put into a standard and sensible sized guidebook. What I simply did was choose a good selection of outstanding and in several cases world class sea stack climbs from Diff to XS from all along the coast and islands.       

Cruit Island Rock Climbing

Gola Island Rock Climbing

 In the past year or two, three Irish guidebooks have been published one was in the form of an App to Donegal created by me. (Donegal rock climbing App). It was most definitely a wee experiment in Irish guidebook writing and several parts of it are recreated in a slightly different format in these two hardcopy Donegal Guidebooks.

 The next was the Fairhead guide, edited by Craig Hiller and Ricky Bell. Craig being a professional photographer and Ricky being Ireland's best rock climber, their guidebook raised the standard of Irish guidebooks considerably. It was the first to use all colour double page spread topos and it was also the first to be edited and indesigned by the authors and not a publishing house.

 Then came Dave Flannigan's select Guide to Ireland, a huge undertaking to not only choose but to fit all the best rock climbing in the country into one book. It raised the already high bar set by the Fairhead Guide up a notch or two and currently sets the standard for Irish climbing guidebooks. It should be noted Dave had already began raising the Irish guidebook standards in 2009 with his first guidebook "Bouldering in Ireland."
 With "Rock Climbing in Ireland," currently setting the Irish guidebook Gold standard, any guide coming out now at a lower standard is alas doomed to fail. With this in mind I returned to many venues around Donegal at different times of morning and evening to get the best crag shots. It is the modern crag shot topos and clear directions to the crag that make a guide user friendly to the first time visitor to the areas described.
         

Ends of the Earth Crag

                   

Winter Climbing in Donegal, Ireland.

 Winter climbing conditions in Ireland are a reasonably rare commodity with the ever present south west trade winds stripping all Jack Frost's good work from the mountains in an alarmingly short time. With the majority of Ireland's mountains being of a more modest height than their Scottish counterparts and  being subject to the same freeze thaw cycles as Scotland, the thaw cycles can be a lot more devastating to the néve and fat ice build up.
 What is required for good winter conditions is at least five days of at least minus 5 at night with daytime temperature hovering about +3. Two further requirements to create good conditions are a good freeve prior to the first snow dump to allow the turf to freeze. It is quite rare for Donegal to get several big dumps of snow which create a complex snow pack. It is much a more regular occurrence for Donegal to get one large snow dump and then consolidation occurs to this single snow mass.

 For more information check the Donegal Winter Climbers guidebook, Donegal Winter Climbing.     

Winter Climbing in Donegal Film

 Anyways, when winter does play ball in Donegal the mountains are transformed into a winter mountaineering playground. The north faces of Slieve Snaght, the Poison Glen, Errigal and Muckish being the prime winter climbing venues. These faces are predominantly very wet places during the summer months with this seepage in the winter months providing the perfect amount of water for good ice build up.

 Below are a few wintery pictures of Donegals mountains over the past few years, every winter has been very different from the previous year. Some years there is an abundance of snow and very little freezing temperatures and other years it freezes so hard and quick that no snow falls and streams freeze at source and no ice cascades form.

Errigal from Slieve Snaght

  The above picture shows the view from the summit of Slieve Snaght looking north towards Errigal. The gully in the foreground contains a shade over 6 meters of snow drift. We attempted to sleep the night in a snow hole, which took hours to dig out, alas the thaw came a few hours earlier and the roof collapsed as the sun set. We walked home off the hills in the dark.

Looking across the Poison Glen to Slieve Snaght

   From the summit of Maumlack looking across the Poison Glen to Slieve Snaght, the alpine faces of the Poison Glen were in pristine winter condition with near 1000ft of compact néve in the gullies and the two falls transformed into near complete multi tiered cascades.

The Aghlas from Dooish Summit

Grogan Mor Plateau

Ice climbing on Muckish

Errigal above very dense cloud

Sunrise walking on winter mountains

  

Tormore Island, Ireland's highest seastack

 The most outstanding summer weather continues towards October and with the first ascent of Bothanvarra sea stack last month I kind of thought that was the end of the foolish nautical activities for 2014. But no, a very prolonged period of uber calm allowed a 4k ring of confidence to project from the west coast of Ireland for a 16 hour period. The contents of the ring was a less than 1 meter swell and a huge wave period and so a free ascent of Tormore Island was pushed to the very top of the to do list.

Tormore Island Film 2014

 Tormore Island is Ireland's highest sea stack and stands at 148 meters above the mighty Neptune. Access to the base of the stack is a very involved affair and on the stack's first ascent in 2008 we used a RiB and a 250 HP out-board engine to gain access, story of this ascent is HERE. This ascent of the stack with noble brothers Pete McConnel, Alan Tees, Peter Cooper was a most excellent day out alas with hindsight the use of an internal combustion engine to reach the stack began to niggle.
 As time passed a very cunning plan to remove the use of motorized nautical transport was devised and I soon realised that the most perfect sea and wind conditions would be necessary to allow safe passage.
 The island sits in a very exposed location in one of the most remote stretches of coastline in Ireland. Around the landward side of it's base live a collection of skerries and stacks which cause a great deal of white water violence and potentially great concern for any would be mariner.

 Tormore Island from south

Tormore Island from the north

 And sho, after having spent the last 8 years playing out on the coastline around Tormore, I had a very cunning plan to access the landward channel of the stack using,off course, the trusty inflatable dingy and no outboard engine.

 Joining me on this rather foolish quest was noble brother Leman Lemanski and with an unsociably early start we were walking into Glenlough Bay across the dark sky bog. As always with all cunning plans of this nature you never know if your nautical calculations are correct until you first sight your intended the sea passage, and lo upon our arrival at Glenlough Bay, the sea was very well behaved indeed. :-) 

 Tormore from Glenlough Bay

Glenlough Bay

The Land of the Giants

Landed on Tormore Island

 The weather and sea were in absolutely perfect condition with a very long and low wave period and pretty much no hint of white water anywhere. We sorted the dry bags and set sail from the landward side of Southern stack and paddled directly across the mouth of Glenlough Bay. on passage we bumped into sea kayakers, Valli and her pal just before entering the realm of the giants. The landward channel of Tormore comprises a small cauldron of outstanding natural beauty surrounded by the giants of Tormore, Hidden Stack, Cobblers Tower, Cnoc na Mara and about a dozen other semi submerged skerries. Under normal sea conditions this wee cauldron is a white watered pits of hate and a suicidal place to be paddling but today it was the entrance to the further. 

 We paddled through the flat calm cauldron and landed on the landward side of Tormore. A swift racking up and we were off upwards. The cunning plan was to follow the original route of 2008 and as I had made a return in 2013 with noble brother Aidan McGinely the belays at the tops of pitches 1 and 2 were in tip top condition.        

Looking down pitch 1

Looking up pitch 2

 The first two pitches of the route take you approx 80 meters up the stack and to this point the climbing is more mountaineering than technical rock climbing. At the top of pitch two we were standing on a grassy ledge clipped to a couple of equalised pegs, above us loomed slightly harder and more technical rock climbing. The next 40 meters of climbing is by far the most technical on the route with spaced gear, suspect rock and huge grass cornices to play on. This took us to a huge grassy ledge in the middle of nowhere and high above the sea. 

 The views from this stance are outstanding with the most remote and beautiful coastline in Ireland beginning to stretch from horizon to horizon. Alas above us is another 60 meters of climbing to the summit with 40 meters of it being unprotected vertical grass.  

Glenlough Bay from Tormore Summit

Tormore Island

 And so, standing on the summit of Tormore Island at 148 meters above the ocean, 500 meters from your nearest point of mainland Donegal, 20 odd kilometers from the nearest main road and over looking the distant edge of the further. It is impossible to express in words a location that few even know exists and only five have ever stood. A summit in which the ground nester reign supreme and the transient world we exist in is a far and distant memory.   

Tormore Summit view

    

Donegal Rock Climbing

 Summer has arrived in Western Donegal with a vengeance, blistering sunshine, flat calms seas and a multitude of nautical summits to be stood on. We've been out to play pretty much everyday and this months highlights include a vertical kicking on a potential new route in the Poison Glen, a new route on An Bhuideal sea stack, several visits to Owey Island to collect photographs, 4 other sea stack summits and a day out filming for German Television.
 I've finally finished the paperback version of the Donegal Guidebook, 1000+ routes and 200+ photo topo's compiled, edited and sorted. All sections are currently complete with one more big push out to Owey Island to get the last three remaining seaward face crags. :-) All that really remains to do then is to populate the topos and sort out the scenery and action shots and we are off to the printers. HURRAH!

 Anyways, went for a wee play with Louise O'Connor to the outstanding An Port Bay. The cunning plan was simply to once again stand on the summit of An Staca. This 23 meter sea stack is known locally as Búd an Diabhil (The Devil's Penis) was first climbed in March 2011 by a superb route up the seaward face. A couple of anonymous climbers climbed a bold route up the landward arete the following year and since then the stack has been pretty much left alone. 

An Staca Film 2014

 Sitting at the end of a 20 km winding b list road and living in one of the most remote locations in Ireland is An Port. This little known and very isolated road end is outstandingly beautiful and residing either side of it is a truly excellent collection of gothic leviathans in the form of 36 very isolated and mildy scary sea stacks.

An Staca Film 2011

 Access to An Staca is by a swift 500 meter paddle directly out to sea from the road end to land on the landward side of the sea stack. The normally tetchy Atlantic Ocean was like a mill pond was we gently paddled out to our nautical oasis.
 We racked up in the shadow of the stack in baking sunshine with the rock under our bare foot being almost too hot to stand on. At a modest grade of VS 4C the sea ward face route begins with very easy stepped climbing with a slight increase in steepness with every move. This takes you to a niche just below the summit, alas between you and the summit is a big steep bulge and off course the 4C move. With my good self at the sharp end it was with several ups and downs and a bit of a grunt to arrive on the summit. Louise off course, floated up the route and wondered what all the fuss was about. :-)
 A most outstanding climb, location and summit, the last time I stood on this summit the stack was surrounded by 20 footers and a modicum of white water. The two films above show the difference in a calm and a bouncy day out sea stack climbing.    

An Port Bay, Donegal

Launching the mighty vessel

Landing on the sea stack

The view from the base of the stack

The Summit

The view from An Staca Summit