Day 27 in the hills! What a great day, but it came with its ups and downs, excuse the puns ;) It got off to a shaky start while setting up the two car at either end of the walk. After leaving one car parked at the end of the walk my GPS tried to take us through off road tracks to the starting place of the walk. So with some time lost and somewhat more driving around on mountain and back roads in the dark we finally got where we wanted to be! At last we were ready to start! An the plus side we got so lucky with the weather and even though we had cloud cover we still got amazing views from each summit, even if for just a few minutes! Philip Byrne, Luis Caballero and I started off with an ascent of Errigal, my final summit in the 700 meter range and the highest in County Donegal. We had a great ascent from the Northern side and then descended via the normal track. The clouds were blowing over the ridge and at times the ridge would become cloud free and needless to say it was very atmospheric! There was some lovely steep ground and I did some rather wet and slippy scrambling up the rock steps of the ridge, it was great craic! While I was off scrambling the other two went off up through the famous keyhole, a stone arch on the side of the mountain! On the summit the wind was blowing but we got a few views and then we were off down towards Mackoght our second summit of the day! On a side note, I had a picture of Errigal on my bedroom wall from the age of 16 and always wanted to climb this iconic mountain and today I was delighted to have done it in such style and a North to South ridge walk rather than up and down the same tourist way! As the day went on the two lads found out what a Project Mountain Goat walk was like. The lack of tracks and the Irish terrain turned out to be hard work for Luis and harder than he thought would actually be! We ticked of the Aghla summits and on Agha Beg we had to make a choice. We were behind time in a big way and at the current pace finishing the planned route would take hours and would include a few hours night navigating. So, the choice was either we all go down towards the car or we spilt up and I go off after the final summit, Muckish. After some chat we came to the decision that we would spilt up, Philip took the map and left me with my GPS and then they descended towards the car parked at Procklis Lough. This would only take them 1 hour and 15 minutes. We had come with two cars and I would continue along the planned route on my own and finish as the second car as planned. Leaving the guys behind was rather like an anti climax for me. I was wondering how they were getting on but I had to focus on what I was doing and I knew Luis was in good hands with Philip and that they would navigate back to the car just fine. So after loosing time on the route and being behind schedule I upped the pace and I felt like I was a bullet from a gun, I was gunning it to finish before dark! 1 hour and 40 mins later I was on top of Muckish at 667m from Aghla Beg. It was tough going but I knew then I would be back at the car before dark. I descend the steep and exciting Miners Track from the summit and walked the mountain road back to the car! Great walking and a great day! Even though the guys decided to finish earlier on the planned route it was absolutely great to have them along on one of the last few walks.I got 6 more PMG summits off the list today and now only 33 summits are remaining! If the weather holds we will head to Inishowen tomorrow to try all 3 summits that I need to climb. This will happen over two different walks, so lets see how that goes! Until tomorrow! #adventure #PMG #projectmountaingoat #donegal #mountainviews #last700metermountain
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 21:11:16 +0000
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