• Donegal Island Adventure

    14 May 2013, 12:51 pm

     An Sho, with many cunning plans for a wee bit of an adventure over the May Bank holiday weekend, the weather gods were having it large with a spot of low cloud and a hint of wind as the annual Climbfest, kicked off on Cruit Island. There was an excellent turn out with climbers travelling from all over the country to attend. A new wall got developed with routes from VS to E2 and several other new lines recorded on the existing crags of Golfers Crag and Farmhouse Buttress. Once again excellent work by Alan Tees and his team on another well organised Climbfest weekend.

    Cruit Island Tyrolean Traverse Film


    Donegal Climbfest
    Climbfest Camp Fire

     On the Monday of the Climbfest as the crowds were beginning to thin in the low laying crowd an altogether smaller team of International players donned the thermals and went in search of vertical pleasure. A team of five from Singapore, and two teams of two from Omagh and Dublin went to play. We split into two sides with one side taking to the sea and the other trying to avoid it. :-) One Side heading to Traderg wall and descended to sea level where Neptune was very much in attendance and with a modicum of white watered rage we made a team ascent of "4 April Fools."
     Alas by this time the sea was by now bouncing proper and so we headed to Albatross Zawn to the shelter from Neptunes Ire. The Albatross Zawn provided excellent sheltered rock with all players getting up several routes and Princess Katy taking the yellow jersey on her ascent of a VS jamming crack as the sun came out.

    Happy Ladies
    Cruit Island rock Climbing

    Donegal Sea Kayaking

    Cruit Island Rock Climbing

    Rope Coiling Lessons
    Rock Climbing in the Sun

    Topping out in the Sun

    Cruit Camp Fire
      The morning after the day before and a rapid turn around in the weather, all hill walking plans were abandoned to favour of a Tyrolean Traverse across the Albatross Zawn. 
     "A Tyrolean Traverse is a method of crossing through free space between two high points on a rope without a hanging cart or cart equivalent." to quote Wikipedia.
     The rigging for the a Tyrolean especially one that spans a 50m+ stretch of sea takes a wee while to set up and involves a lot of prior planning if you wish to avoid swimming. :-) An hour or so later and 14 independent anchors, 100m of semi-static, 120m of dynamic, 20+ HMS karabiners and an assortment of softwear, our creation was ready for airtime and so John Mallon and myself took flight to test the fear factor of the beast.  
     It was now the turn of our international climbing team and so one by one everyone took flight across the zawn. This was a most excellent way to finish a four day stay on Cruit island. 
     This two day adventure holiday was organised in conjunction with Mark, Donna & John of 4 Elements NI 
    Tyrolean Traverse
    Mid Air Acrobatics
    The Exit Point
    Tyrolean Across the Zawn
    Cruit Island Tyrolean Traverse




  • Donegal Rock Climbers Guidebook 2013

    8 May 2013, 7:01 am

     And Sho, after a bit of a technical struggle (for me) the Donegal Rock Climbers Guidebook 2013 is now on sale, it is a wee bit of an experiment in Ireland as this is the first rock climbers guidebook to be released in the form of an App. At present it is only available through Apple for the I-phone, but very shortly it will be ready for android users too.


    A Wee Sample of the App

    Home Screen
    Donegal Map


     The amount of recorded rock climbing in Donegal is vast and would fill many books, this guide is a select guide to the county and covers all the best areas, islands, crags and routes.
     The App contains just over 1000 of the best rock climbs in Co Donegal and all the routes are featured as lines on photo topos. I've used a shade over 200+ photo topos and they were taken from the best angles to allow the user to best identify their chosen routes. To assist the first time visitor to each area and in the location of individual crags a series of crag topos were used where there is a group of crags in a specific small area. The crag topo's were taken from the best angle to get as many crags into one shot as possible.
    Grade Chart
    Sector Details
    Crag Details
    Google Earth
    Crag Overview
    Crag Topo

     The guide uses your phones in built GPS to allow the user to locate all the individual crags, islands, ferries, car parking, recommended camping spots and as much helpful information as I could think of as the entire guide is designed for the user/climber who has never before visited the county. 
     The actual crag topos are fully interactive and all routes are clickable links to highlight the line and display the route descriptions.
     In addition to the select guide I have produced a series of 21 definitive guides to the entire county, each is a sectional guide and is in PDF format. These definitive guides are all linked into the home pages of each chapter in the app and are available as free downloads from www.uniqueascent.ie.
     The most popular of these definitive PDF guide downloads are
     Cruit Island Guide   A 70 page guide to Cruit Island

     Gola Island Guide    A 44 page guide to Gola Island

     Donegal Sea Stack Guide   A 48 page guide to the sea stacks of Donegal.

     Malinbeg Guide    A 26 page guide to one of Donegal's original climbing areas.

  • Skye Cuillin Ridge Training in Ireland

    21 April 2013, 10:00 pm

     And Sho, having traversed the mighty Cuillin ridge in Skye two and a half times in the past 11 years and having played out on the summits and faces of all 11 of the main Cuillin ridge Munros on many more occasions. It was opportune that noble brother Ciaran Wilson made contact to enquire about the possibility of a wee bit of vertical training prior to his expedition to said, Skye and the mighty Cuillin Ridge.
     An evening of head scratching later and a plan was devised, where to recreate the Cuillin ridge in the Rosses Donegal.  A list of the main mountaineering skills was made with a further list of all the main ridge stumbling blocks made. The Thearlaich Dubh Gap (TD gap) abseil and lead, the Inaccessible Pinnacle climb and abseil, Am Basteir Tooth and the many KM's of very exposed roped and unroped mountaineering ground in between.
     An sho, we went to play, on the first day we met at Cruit Island and using several of the near 400 rock climbing routes on the island we recreated many of the mountaineering features of the ridge. Now, this involved several one to one conversations with Neptune rather than the big air experience of the main Cuillin ridge in Skye. But by the end of the day we were ready for a wee visit to somewhere with a modicum of big air.


    North Face of Errigal Mountain

     Tower Ridge on Errigal Mountain is by far the most outstanding way to the highest point in Co. Donegal. This was our objective for day as big air and a suitable amount of roped and un-roped scrambling at a suitable grade, was the order of the day.


    Dunlewey, Donegal, Ireland


    Tower Ridge, Errigal Mountain


    Scrambling in Donegal, Ireland


    Ireland Mountaineering

     We started at the abandoned house on the main road directly below the West face of Errigal, and micro navigated into the base of the North Ridge of the mountain. It was here sheltering from an un-seasonal horizontal down pour we suited, booted and racked up for the task that loomed above us. Standing on our huge crater filled platform at the base of Errigal's North face looking up into Mordor is a tad surreal and quite unlike the more normal and much more frequented south face route of the mountain. 
      
     Donegal Mountaineering

     A couple of hundred meters of steep ground and we were onto the base of Tower Ridge and with increasing exposure we ascended towards the very definite crux pitch approx 150m up the route. The crux pitch is 40m meters long and very, very exposed indeed. It was at this point high on the ridge we sheltered behind each other whilst a 3 minute hail storm lashed our lofty and exposed perch. A wee bit of grunting and we were up and off the steep crux pitch and onto the summit ridge.   


    Crux Pitch on Tower Ridge


    Mountaineering in Ireland


    The Summit of Errigal Mountain, Donegal

     A most excellent weekend of playing out on Donegal's lesser known places whilst training for Scotland's greater known places. :-)
     And Good luck to Ciaran Wilson on his noble quest of a traverse of the mighty Cuillin ridge on the island of Skye. 

  • A Return of Spring in Ireland

    19 April 2013, 9:44 am

     An Sho, with the snow finally retreating upwards in the Irish uplands and Spring has made a return in the form of torrential rain and hurricane winds. But all is not lost to the elements as the ever dry Cruit Island has came up trumps over the last two weeks with 4 different groups of people requiring instruction into the vertical world. Four different groups with four very different remits and goals, ranging from first time rock climbers through to a couple of gentlemen heading to distant lands for something very spicy indeed.

    Rock Climbing Courses in Donegal

    A happy climber

    A busy Donegal Beach
    Jock's Wall, Cruit Island
    Jock's Wall
    Crack 'n' Slab HS 4b

     It's been a funny old couple of weeks with a couple of near misses with nearly appearing on television and very nearly jumping out of a plane. But it's the hits that count and the very final touches are being added to the very soon to be released Donegal guidebook, with graded lists, graded colour bands, an introduction page and a major rechecking of many of the routes and grades. 
     There are now 17 free PDF downloadable Donegal rock climbers guidebooks on the Unique Ascent Website, I've just got the Inishowen PDF to finish and upload and they are done. There are several further definitive guides to be finished such as Owey, Tory and Arranmore Island but alas I still require calm seas to get a few of the sea cliff topos pictures.  
     Got out to play with the depressingly talented noble brother Kevin McGee and another three new routes were added to Cruit island's New Dawn Wall, and with very strong rumours that noble brother Hugh Hennessy has been quietly filling in a few gaps on the island over the last few weeks, Cruit Island is far from the end of it's development stage. :-) 





  • Adventure Climbing in Ireland

    7 April 2013, 8:34 pm

     And Sho, hailing from the depths of Hereford, Geoff and Sarah Corbett arrived in the sunny County of Donegal with a single express mission in mind and that mission was to paddle off the End's of the Earth.

    Adventure in Donegal


     And so, to Cruit Island for a day of vertical pleasure, we arrived to the usual Cruit Island welcome of bright blue skies and a shimmering seas. We spent the day in the company of a very calm and relaxed Neptune and went about our task of safe adventure climbing practice. Half a dozen routes later and a wee visit to a ringside seat  at the deep and we were all set for the task at hand, for the next day was forecast to be a wee bit emotional.
    An Port Bay, Donegal

     The following day we arrived at the portal to the other world dimension that is the Port road end and began the clifftop walk north to the view point over looking the mighty Cnoc na Mara. The entire Slievetooey peninsula was in outstanding condition with the clearest brightest skies and massive vista's in all directions. 
     We descended into Glenlough Bay and arrived just beyond The Ends of the Earth Crag to arrive at our goal.
     The Ends of the Earth Stack is an excellent 30 metre high sea stack sitting approx 300 metres out to sea in one of the most remote location on the mainland of Ireland. 

    Donegal Sea Stack Climbing

    Geoff arrives on the Sea Stack

     A swift sea passage and Geoff alighted onto the landward tip of the stack, a further swift sea passage and Sarah was duly transported onto the same wee platform. Alas, this meant we were still a wee bit of a coastaleer away from the base of the parent stack. Between us and the base of the End's of the Earth Stack was a subsidiary summit and a superb wee sea ridge joining the two summits. So we made our way over the first summit and crossed the sea ridge on to the base of the End's of the Earth sea stack. We were now standing on one of the most remote and mildly scary points of land in Ireland. :-)    

    The view from the stack back to Donegal
    Sea Stack climbing in the sunshine

      At this juncture the North winds were indeed beginning to freshen and the northerly motion was starting to liven, and thus haste was the key. We all raced up and onto this very remote piece of land and watched as the legions of the damned approached from the north.


    The summit at The End's of the Earth

     A quick abseil down the landward face of the stack and a re-tracing of our steps on the sea ridge and we were back at our ferry boat launch pad. Alas by now the winds were funneling and nautical navigation through the skerries was a touch emotional. :-) 

    Sea Stack Climbing
     There are very few places on earth where you can have a true adventure without travelling through time zones and spending a fortune. Off the coast of Donegal sit a collection of summits that fewer people have stood on than have circumnavigated the Moon or jumped to Earth from the edge of space. 





  • Donegal Island Adventure

    14 May 2013, 9:11 pm

     An Sho, with many cunning plans for a wee bit of an adventure over the May Bank holiday weekend, the weather gods were having it large with a spot of low cloud and a hint of wind as the annual Climbfest, kicked off on Cruit Island. There was an excellent turn out with climbers travelling from all over the country to attend. A new wall got developed with routes from VS to E2 and several other new lines recorded on the existing crags of Golfers Crag and Farmhouse Buttress. Once again excellent work by Alan Tees and his team on another well organised Climbfest weekend.

    Cruit Island Tyrolean Traverse Film


    Donegal Climbfest
    Climbfest Camp Fire

     On the Monday of the Climbfest as the crowds were beginning to thin in the low laying crowd an altogether smaller team of International players donned the thermals and went in search of vertical pleasure. A team of five from Singapore, and two teams of two from Omagh and Dublin went to play. We split into two sides with one side taking to the sea and the other trying to avoid it. :-) One Side heading to Traderg wall and descended to sea level where Neptune was very much in attendance and with a modicum of white watered rage we made a team ascent of "4 April Fools."
     Alas by this time the sea was by now bouncing proper and so we headed to Albatross Zawn to the shelter from Neptunes Ire. The Albatross Zawn provided excellent sheltered rock with all players getting up several routes and Princess Katy taking the yellow jersey on her ascent of a VS jamming crack as the sun came out.

    Happy Ladies
    Cruit Island rock Climbing

    Donegal Sea Kayaking

    Cruit Island Rock Climbing

    Rope Coiling Lessons
    Rock Climbing in the Sun

    Topping out in the Sun

    Cruit Camp Fire
      The morning after the day before and a rapid turn around in the weather, all hill walking plans were abandoned to favour of a Tyrolean Traverse across the Albatross Zawn. 
     "A Tyrolean Traverse is a method of crossing through free space between two high points on a rope without a hanging cart or cart equivalent." to quote Wikipedia.
     The rigging for the a Tyrolean especially one that spans a 50m+ stretch of sea takes a wee while to set up and involves a lot of prior planning if you wish to avoid swimming. :-) An hour or so later and 14 independent anchors, 100m of semi-static, 120m of dynamic, 20+ HMS karabiners and an assortment of softwear, our creation was ready for airtime and so John Mallon and myself took flight to test the fear factor of the beast.  
     It was now the turn of our international climbing team and so one by one everyone took flight across the zawn. This was a most excellent way to finish a four day stay on Cruit island. 
     This two day adventure holiday was organised in conjunction with Mark, Donna & John of 4 Elements NI 
    Tyrolean Traverse
    Mid Air Acrobatics
    The Exit Point
    Tyrolean Across the Zawn
    Cruit Island Tyrolean Traverse




  • Donegal Rock Climbers Guidebook 2013

    10 May 2013, 8:27 pm

     And Sho, after a bit of a technical struggle (for me) the Donegal Rock Climbers Guidebook 2013 is now on sale, it is a wee bit of an experiment in Ireland as this is the first rock climbers guidebook to be released in the form of an App. At present it is only available through Apple for the I-phone, but very shortly it will be ready for android users too.


    A Wee Sample of the App

    Home Screen
    Donegal Map


     The amount of recorded rock climbing in Donegal is vast and would fill many books, this guide is a select guide to the county and covers all the best areas, islands, crags and routes.
     The App contains just over 1000 of the best rock climbs in Co Donegal and all the routes are featured as lines on photo topos. I've used a shade over 200+ photo topos and they were taken from the best angles to allow the user to best identify their chosen routes. To assist the first time visitor to each area and in the location of individual crags a series of crag topos were used where there is a group of crags in a specific small area. The crag topo's were taken from the best angle to get as many crags into one shot as possible.
    Grade Chart
    Sector Details
    Crag Details
    Google Earth
    Crag Overview
    Crag Topo

     The guide uses your phones in built GPS to allow the user to locate all the individual crags, islands, ferries, car parking, recommended camping spots and as much helpful information as I could think of as the entire guide is designed for the user/climber who has never before visited the county. 
     The actual crag topos are fully interactive and all routes are clickable links to highlight the line and display the route descriptions.
     In addition to the select guide I have produced a series of 21 definitive guides to the entire county, each is a sectional guide and is in PDF format. These definitive guides are all linked into the home pages of each chapter in the app and are available as free downloads from www.uniqueascent.ie.
     The most popular of these definitive PDF guide downloads are
     Cruit Island Guide   A 70 page guide to Cruit Island

     Gola Island Guide    A 44 page guide to Gola Island

     Donegal Sea Stack Guide   A 48 page guide to the sea stacks of Donegal.

     Malinbeg Guide    A 26 page guide to one of Donegal's original climbing areas.

  • Skye Cuillin Ridge Training in Ireland

    21 April 2013, 10:00 pm

     And Sho, having traversed the mighty Cuillin ridge in Skye two and a half times in the past 11 years and having played out on the summits and faces of all 11 of the main Cuillin ridge Munros on many more occasions. It was opportune that noble brother Ciaran Wilson made contact to enquire about the possibility of a wee bit of vertical training prior to his expedition to said, Skye and the mighty Cuillin Ridge.
     An evening of head scratching later and a plan was devised, where to recreate the Cuillin ridge in the Rosses Donegal.  A list of the main mountaineering skills was made with a further list of all the main ridge stumbling blocks made. The Thearlaich Dubh Gap (TD gap) abseil and lead, the Inaccessible Pinnacle climb and abseil, Am Basteir Tooth and the many KM's of very exposed roped and unroped mountaineering ground in between.
     An sho, we went to play, on the first day we met at Cruit Island and using several of the near 400 rock climbing routes on the island we recreated many of the mountaineering features of the ridge. Now, this involved several one to one conversations with Neptune rather than the big air experience of the main Cuillin ridge in Skye. But by the end of the day we were ready for a wee visit to somewhere with a modicum of big air.


    North Face of Errigal Mountain

     Tower Ridge on Errigal Mountain is by far the most outstanding way to the highest point in Co. Donegal. This was our objective for day as big air and a suitable amount of roped and un-roped scrambling at a suitable grade, was the order of the day.


    Dunlewey, Donegal, Ireland


    Tower Ridge, Errigal Mountain


    Scrambling in Donegal, Ireland


    Ireland Mountaineering

     We started at the abandoned house on the main road directly below the West face of Errigal, and micro navigated into the base of the North Ridge of the mountain. It was here sheltering from an un-seasonal horizontal down pour we suited, booted and racked up for the task that loomed above us. Standing on our huge crater filled platform at the base of Errigal's North face looking up into Mordor is a tad surreal and quite unlike the more normal and much more frequented south face route of the mountain. 
      
     Donegal Mountaineering

     A couple of hundred meters of steep ground and we were onto the base of Tower Ridge and with increasing exposure we ascended towards the very definite crux pitch approx 150m up the route. The crux pitch is 40m meters long and very, very exposed indeed. It was at this point high on the ridge we sheltered behind each other whilst a 3 minute hail storm lashed our lofty and exposed perch. A wee bit of grunting and we were up and off the steep crux pitch and onto the summit ridge.   


    Crux Pitch on Tower Ridge


    Mountaineering in Ireland


    The Summit of Errigal Mountain, Donegal

     A most excellent weekend of playing out on Donegal's lesser known places whilst training for Scotland's greater known places. :-)
     And Good luck to Ciaran Wilson on his noble quest of a traverse of the mighty Cuillin ridge on the island of Skye. 

  • A Return of Spring in Ireland

    19 April 2013, 9:46 am

     An Sho, with the snow finally retreating upwards in the Irish uplands and Spring has made a return in the form of torrential rain and hurricane winds. But all is not lost to the elements as the ever dry Cruit Island has came up trumps over the last two weeks with 4 different groups of people requiring instruction into the vertical world. Four different groups with four very different remits and goals, ranging from first time rock climbers through to a couple of gentlemen heading to distant lands for something very spicy indeed.

    Rock Climbing Courses in Donegal

    A happy climber

    A busy Donegal Beach
    Jock's Wall, Cruit Island
    Jock's Wall
    Crack 'n' Slab HS 4b

     It's been a funny old couple of weeks with a couple of near misses with nearly appearing on television and very nearly jumping out of a plane. But it's the hits that count and the very final touches are being added to the very soon to be released Donegal guidebook, with graded lists, graded colour bands, an introduction page and a major rechecking of many of the routes and grades. 
     There are now 17 free PDF downloadable Donegal rock climbers guidebooks on the Unique Ascent Website, I've just got the Inishowen PDF to finish and upload and they are done. There are several further definitive guides to be finished such as Owey, Tory and Arranmore Island but alas I still require calm seas to get a few of the sea cliff topos pictures.  
     Got out to play with the depressingly talented noble brother Kevin McGee and another three new routes were added to Cruit island's New Dawn Wall, and with very strong rumours that noble brother Hugh Hennessy has been quietly filling in a few gaps on the island over the last few weeks, Cruit Island is far from the end of it's development stage. :-) 





  • Adventure Climbing in Ireland

    8 April 2013, 9:00 am

     And Sho, hailing from the depths of Hereford, Geoff and Sarah Corbett arrived in the sunny County of Donegal with a single express mission in mind and that mission was to paddle off the End's of the Earth.

    Adventure in Donegal


     And so, to Cruit Island for a day of vertical pleasure, we arrived to the usual Cruit Island welcome of bright blue skies and a shimmering seas. We spent the day in the company of a very calm and relaxed Neptune and went about our task of safe adventure climbing practice. Half a dozen routes later and a wee visit to a ringside seat  at the deep and we were all set for the task at hand, for the next day was forecast to be a wee bit emotional.
    An Port Bay, Donegal

     The following day we arrived at the portal to the other world dimension that is the Port road end and began the clifftop walk north to the view point over looking the mighty Cnoc na Mara. The entire Slievetooey peninsula was in outstanding condition with the clearest brightest skies and massive vista's in all directions. 
     We descended into Glenlough Bay and arrived just beyond The Ends of the Earth Crag to arrive at our goal.
     The Ends of the Earth Stack is an excellent 30 metre high sea stack sitting approx 300 metres out to sea in one of the most remote location on the mainland of Ireland. 

    Donegal Sea Stack Climbing

    Geoff arrives on the Sea Stack

     A swift sea passage and Geoff alighted onto the landward tip of the stack, a further swift sea passage and Sarah was duly transported onto the same wee platform. Alas, this meant we were still a wee bit of a coastaleer away from the base of the parent stack. Between us and the base of the End's of the Earth Stack was a subsidiary summit and a superb wee sea ridge joining the two summits. So we made our way over the first summit and crossed the sea ridge on to the base of the End's of the Earth sea stack. We were now standing on one of the most remote and mildly scary points of land in Ireland. :-)    

    The view from the stack back to Donegal
    Sea Stack climbing in the sunshine

      At this juncture the North winds were indeed beginning to freshen and the northerly motion was starting to liven, and thus haste was the key. We all raced up and onto this very remote piece of land and watched as the legions of the damned approached from the north.


    The summit at The End's of the Earth

     A quick abseil down the landward face of the stack and a re-tracing of our steps on the sea ridge and we were back at our ferry boat launch pad. Alas by now the winds were funneling and nautical navigation through the skerries was a touch emotional. :-) 

    Sea Stack Climbing
     There are very few places on earth where you can have a true adventure without travelling through time zones and spending a fortune. Off the coast of Donegal sit a collection of summits that fewer people have stood on than have circumnavigated the Moon or jumped to Earth from the edge of space. 





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