Sunday, January 3, 2010

In the snow without a camera.........again.


We've shaken off the lethargy of Christmas, and I've found new motivation for getting out there......I want to do an alpine climbing course in Switzerland in September, and I will need to be really fit. Not as in a bit of walking two weeks before type fit, as in start-right-the-hell-now or be left behind.

So to this end, and also because really I'd not rather be doing anything else, Mark and I headed up the mighty Slieve Donard last Monday. Donard is only about 860m above sea level, but seeing as how you start from a carpark opposite the beach in Newcastle, you have to work for every one of those metres. On the last part up to the col between Donard and Commedagh, the path was badly iced up, so much so that we had to find an alternative route up some dodgy heather next to a frozen watercourse. Because we didn't fancy going down the same way, which would have been a treacherous undertaking, we walked up to the top of Slieve Commedagh instead. Because this is a popular part of the Mournes, and because despite the cold it was a beautiful, clear, windless day, we met many other groups of hill-walkers. In Ireland, because the weather is always such a topical issue, the standard thing to do when casually greeting someone you've never seen before and will probably never see again, but feel you have to say something because you are after all out doing the same thing, is to make some remark about the weather, or, if the other person speaks first, to agree with what they have said about the weather.


The top of Commedagh, a few meters lower than Donard, was plastered with snow. We returned to Donard forest and the car-park via Commedagh's north ridge, a more sensible proposition than the iced-up path above the head of the Glen River valley, pausing to agree with random strangers about the weather several times along the way. One thing we could certainly all agree on was that a clear winter's day is some of the best weather you can get, no matter where in the world you are.


Yesterday (Saturday) we opted for the Cooley ridge walk, from Slieve Foye above Carlingford, to the telecoms masts on Black Mountain and down to Ravensdale forest. These are my "home mountains"; I have done the walk before, but as two separate walks on different occasions. Doing it in one is quite a walk - it took us six hours, moving at a fair pace, and we didn't stop anywhere for more than a few minutes at a time. Nadia dropped us on the south side of Foye, and we followed a route straight up the south side, to the right of the lamp post in the photo (yes, I forgot the camera again and that photo was taken this morning from my bedroom window). We then followed the ridge from the high point (the summit of Slieve Foye) left along the ridge, then the heart-breaking loss of height down to the Windy Gap, and you gain most of it back again on the opposite ridge.

The Cooleys are a bit lower than the Mournes, but there's still plenty of snow, and the road that you follow from the masts down to Ravensdale was completely iced over.