Mud and Midges

In April last year we visited Lough Belshade for the first time. It's a gem of a crag hidden away in the Bluestack mountains in Donegal. On that occasion we climbed "Classical Revival", a 3-star HVS, well worth the muddy 2-hour walk-in. I remember sending an email afterwards, with photos, to some of my climbing friends, echoing the sentiments of someone who had posted about the area on the UKC forums: "visit this crag before you die".

Well I should have known that as with most things in life the second time is seldom as good. Yesterday we endured the boggy 2-hour walk, and when we arrived, our objective, the 4-pitch "Land of Hearts Desire" looked suspiciously wet. As we were standing looking at it, trying to work out whether it really was wet rock or not, it started raining. Mark commented, in his usual understated manner: "It's not going to get any drier in that."

The routes on the smaller Blaeberry crag to the right looked dry, but weren't going to stay that way either, and the midges were out too.

So I'm going to amend, slightly, my enthusiasm for Lough Belshade. You must visit, of course; you may enjoy an ascent of a very fine route, on very good, solid granite, with good protection. But this being Ireland, and more specifically Donegal, you have an equal chance of ending up sitting in the rain waving off clouds of midgies.

Whichever it is, however, you will be doing it in one of the most beautiful, tranquil, climbing areas you will ever have the privilege of visiting.


The Danoon waterfall, a short detour from the track (1st phase of the walk), we missed it last time.


There was a lot more water around this time too.


So is the rock wet or what? Kinda irrelevant anyway when it starts raining.


No he's not a member of one of Northern Ireland's paramilitary organisations, Mark is wearing a midgie-net. Don't leave home without one.

Christmas in June

On Friday morning I finally plucked up the nerve to solo "Christmas" on Wee Binnian. It kept me busy the whole way up, and I almost down-climbed from half-way, but there comes a point when it's easier and less scary to just carry on up.

The top section was not as bad as I'd feared, probably because I'd hyped it up in my mind so much. There is a lot of air underneath you on the final few moves, however.

This was quite an achievement for me, in terms of where my climbing is at right now. It's not a difficult climb, I've soloed harder (both in SA and here), but I've had this climb as a marker in my mind, something I've needed to do to prove to myself that I'm really back. I'll never be the climber I once was (and I was never outstanding), but considering all the other things in life that I have started and given up on, I feel I can now truly say that rock climbing is not one of those things.

I can't explain why it took the solo ascent of an insignificant route on an insignificant peak in a small mountain range in Northern Ireland to finally realise this, but anyhow, the job is done.

I've put out a request on the Northern climbers forum to try and get a photo of the climb, or if I figure out how to get photos off my phone and onto the computer, I'll put one up.

Wee Binnian

Because this is an Irish climbing blog, many posts are going to start with a comment on the weather, so let this one be no exception. We've had GREAT weather this past week, and this morning I took off early, to the Mournes of course, and walked up to Little ("Wee") Binnian


There's a route here called "Christmas" that I've wanted to do for a long time, but I was in solo mode again today, and I don't quite fancy the top groove of Christmas as a solo. The guide book describes it as "intimidating", and I've learned to take this guidebook at its word. Another time perhaps, if I solo it I'll have to take the brass ones along.

Anyhow, the views from the top of Wee Binnian are awesome. This is literally "where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea".


You can look down on the Silent Valley dam.


And across to the Carlingford Lough, that's Slieve Foy on the other side of the lough, and Dundalk, my home town, is behind that (out of sight). There's talk of a bridge being built over the lough, joining the Republic and Northern Ireland, and it will cut down the journey time to the Mournes a great deal, and will cut out Newry's traffic.


But I was there to climb, and I did two routes, Diamond and Valentine, both VD grade.



I was back in Dundalk by lunch time, and Nadia and I treated ourselves to lunch at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Another encounter with Morgan - Hen Mountain

We are having the most fantastic weather this weekend, today is the first real summer day we've had this year, sunny with temperatures to match. After fighting off a prolonged bout of tonsillitis (three rounds of ani-biotics later) I took advantage of the dry spell today and went up to Hen Mountain, and soloed four routes; Morgan, Keyhole Crack and Simplicity (all V.Diff grade) and the Boulder Route on the Tower, an easier but longer climb.

This route Morgan, she and I have a relationship. She's a thin seam up an open book. I think of her as female, because if you're bold she welcomes you like a lover, but if you're in any way tentative she makes you grunt and squirm your way up, terrified. A fall would be very serious indeed, probably fatal. There's no soft landing here. Morgan and I have this interesting relationship. I love her, and she barely tolerates me. First move up, ok I can still downclimb here. Next move, that wasn't so bad, well now I'm committed. Morgan seems pleased, but she's not going to make it easier. Next move, falling now would be very bad already. Foot out left, no, not that far, in a bit, that's better. The holds on the right come to my rescue, and I can hear Morgan starting to laugh. The crux is a very committing move, feet smearing to reach a reasonable hold. A few more tentative moves up less steep ground and it's over.

I moved onto Keyhole Crack next, the route next door. Towards the top of it I spend a while getting my body position exactly right for an awkward pull over a bulge. I glance to my left. Morgan's there, watching me in stoic silence. But I can hear her saying, however it is that she does that: Michael Williams, you un-pardonable wuss.

I don't have photos of Morgan. I don't want to share her with anyone else.

Welcome, Tom Warnock

Congratulations Claire and Mark, Tom Warnock was born on Monday 25th May. I was going to say "little" Tom Warnock but he's 9 lbs 4 oz, that aint so little. Mom and baby both doing well.

Let's hope he gets to climb the Old Man of Hoy as well, one day, before it falls over!

Updated: This photo was taken yesterday, July 17th. That's Tom with big sister Ellie.

First rock climb for 2009

Well today, Sunday 03 May 2009, I'm sitting at home on a beautiful day updating the blog. Couldn't climb this weekend because I have tonsillitis, a particularly bad form of it that I last had 4 years ago. It was horrible then and it's horrible now, very painful. Well at least it's given me time to catch up on this blogging thing.

Mark and I did manage to get out on Easter Monday, to kick the climbing season off. We went up to Lower Cove (which despite its name is miles from the sea) in the Mournes, and faffed about a bit trying to decide which route to do. It was really cold, so much so that when we actually got around to climbing "Kram" (VS 4c), we couldn't feel our hands or fingers at all they were so numb. Quite interesting, pulling on holds that you can't see and have no idea how good they really are because you can't feel them!

Anyhow, here's to a good summer in '09!

Canada - January 2009

In January of this year, I visited an old friend, Teddy McCrea, a South African who now lives in Calgary. The last time I saw Teddy was in 1999, when he was passing through SA, I remember Lara was just a few months old at the time (she'll be 10 in July!). So it was great to catch up, and also to meet Lynda, Hillary, and Leo the dog (a.k.a. Hosehead).

I was there for about 10 days, and we were really lucky with the weather. Most days were clear and sunny, with temperatures around zero or even just above. It was only the last two days that we had a cold snap, the temp dropping to about -25 C. That was certainly a new experience for me! But the following pics are typical of the weather we had for the majority of my time there.

Well, besides catching up with Teddy, I was also there to try ice climbing, so after hiring some equipment, and also buying some other nice gear that would have cost three times more in Ireland, we set off to the Junkyards, a popular practice area for ice climbers in the Canadian Rockies. Ted showed me the basics, just getting the hang of walking on steep ice is a bit nerve wracking at first.

We then set up a top-rope on a vertical section.

I managed to get things together enough to lead a very easy line also, before we retired to the Grizzly Paw pub in nearby Canmore; we spent quite a bit of time in this establishment over the next 10 days!

The next day Ted, Lynda and I went cross-country skiing. Spent quite a bit of the day on my backside in the snow.

And of course we had to build a snow-man back at the house; Ted later used Photoshop to make the snowman look about 12 feet tall, a picture we sent back to my kids, they were well impressed.

We walked into Grotto the following day, but being a Sunday, and also one of the more accessible areas, it was very crowded. We opted to do some sight-seeing, so we drove via Kicking Horse Canyon across the BC border to a town called Field, really beautiful area and lovely houses. We also stopped off at Lake Louise on the way

We then went back to Grotto towards the end of the day, and walked in as the last of the other climbers were walking out, so we had the place to ourselves. Ice climbing is extremely physical, it's much harder on the whole body that rock climbing. The latter relies more on fine movements, whereas with ice climbing it's much harder to conserve energy, you end up using a whole bunch of it. The following pics were taken at Grotto, or on the walk in to it.

We were back at the Canmore Junkyards a couple of times after this, we climbed on the upper sections of it too. After leading up "Scottish Gully" on the left of the area, Ted dislodged some good sized blocks of ice, one of which hit me on the back of the leg as I was trying to run out the way. I was limping for a couple of days, but fortunately suffered no other damage.

The highlight of the trip, from a climbing point of view, was Cascade Waterfall. This is a multi-pitch route, close to the Trans-Canada highway, and is very prone to avalanches as it lies beneath a huge snow bowl for which it basically serves as a funnel. There was very little snow higher up when we did it though, so not much danger of anything coming down. It was also a glorious day, we were down to T-shirts very soon. We abseiled off before the last steep section, as Ted felt that the ice was not in good enough condition to guarantee secure ice screw placements (well at least that's our story and we're sticking to it)!

The weather deteriorated a bit after this; despite that we did try one last trip back to Grotto, but we had Leo with us, and it was too cold for him. He ended up sitting in the snow lifting his feet up off the ground. We couldn't have left him in the car either, so we ended up just doing a bit of a drive up in the mountains behind Canmore.

This was a fantastic trip, a brand new climbing experience, my first time ever in North America, and great to catch up with Teddy.