Sunday, June 6, 2010

Ballaghageeha Buttress - Poisoned Glen, Donegal

We try to climb in Donegal a couple of times each year. It's quite a long drive; 2 hours from Mark's house, add another 40 minutes for me from Dundalk. But it's always worth it, as long as the weather plays along. There's a lot of variety, from sea-cliffs with no walk-in, to real mountain crags that are quite remote.

Yesterday we visited one of the latter. The Ballaghageeha crag sits high up at the very top of the Poisoned Glen. It's best approached from the other side, from just near Lough Barra and the Bingorms - it's exactly three years since we climbed Tarquin's Groove on Bingorm West, on a beautiful June weekend in 2007, the last one before the three month rain shower that washed out the rest of that summer.

Because this was our first visit to this crag, and also because you can't see it from the walk-in, we missed it the first time and ended up too far west. Having no map with us, we resorted to examining a photograph in the guide-book that showed the area we were in, but taken from way to the north, looking south. We were on the mountain looking north. So we had to find a landmark (an old stone church in the valley) and try to discern where we were in relation to it with the opposite view. This made my head melt, so I left it to Mark; being a land surveyor these things are less daunting for him. I must also emphasise that we were not lost, the crag was!

When we eventually tracked it down we climbed "Diagonal", a 3-star grade V-Diff route. 3 stars is the maximum awarded in British / Irish climbing quality, and the whole crag is nice and clean with good rock. On the way out, I stopped to take a phone call (who would have thought you get a full signal in the Poisoned Glen) and Mark took the opportunity to do some bouldering. So here some photos, in no particular order:







Looking down the Poisoned Glen; the peak to the right is Errigal, the highest in Donegal: