It seems winter has finally released its grip, and allowed Spring to take a practical hold, rather than just a nominal one. After not having heard from Mark in a while, a text appeared out of the blue last Wednesday, and today we headed over to the Ott mountain track and up to Doan, a rather lonely peak over-looking both the Silent Valley reservoir and Lough Shannagh. This photo is looking down from the southern side of Doan to the Silent Valley and the Irish Sea beyond ("where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea"):
There are only a handful of routes on Doan, and not all of the best quality. Further, they seem very hard for the grades given. I suppose this could be because both of us haven't climbed rock in a while, but we've both been training and are fairly fit - ah feck it, it's just typical Mournes climbing, and climbing granite always was and always will be a weird experience, no matter how much of it you may do.
This is Mark trying to remember how to interpret the Mournes route book:
We started off on "Practice Crack", an easy, short, blocky route that we climbed in our walking boots. Great, now for a face graded Severe (3c). Should be a doddle. Heh. A dodgy wire placement just above the belay and committing moves on rounded holds - "3c" my well rounded ass. So, with typical Irish logic, we moved on to something harder, not that we had much choice, due to the limited scope available.
This climb was actually quite pleasant, and very well protected, for the first 25 of its approximately 30 metres. The top is bloody scary, certainly harder than 4a, and I'm glad Mark led it. Oh, and it goes by the rather uninspiring name of "Fag End". Here's Mark smiling for the camera before getting really scared just a few feet higher:
This seems a fairly remote part of the Mournes, but walking back down afterwards we had to dodge what seemed like about a thousand runners taking part in a fell-running event. One of them was a climber we recognised, we've seen him up at Fairhead before. "You should rather go to Lower Cove", he said, "much better climbing there." Well we've been to Lower Cove a few times, and he's dead right.
The views from the summit of Doan are lovely. This is looking across to Slieve Binnian:
And down to Lough Shannagh:
And your's truly:
Doan is lovely, but when I come back it'll be for the walk and the scenery, not the climbing.
Did a few routes on doan last summer.. It was all a bit gnarly and a bit of a pain in the backside lol.. I agree very much with title of the post.
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