Sunday 16 March 2014

Ireland's Remote Places

 Spring has arrived in Donegal with a blast of glorious sunshine and without further ado Louise O' Connor and my good self made two swift visits to "Beyond the Ends of the Earth Crag." The first of these visits was on a day of uber bouncy south west seas running and alas the crag was taking green and white to walls and roof of the cave at the back of the crag. We abandoned any cunning plans and went and visited an old friend along the coast, "The Unforgiven" sea stack now has a new and slightly less emotional exit point. :-)
 The second visit to the crag resulted in equally bumpy sea conditions BUT seas were running from the west and allowed us to abseil into the cave at the back of the crag and climb a superb 40 meter high line traverse across the wall, all in glorious sunshine. "Exposure Explosion" is an excellent traverse line with superb juggy rock throughout the climb.  

Exposure Explosion film

 "Beyond the Ends of the Earth Crag" is surely a prime contender for the most remote rock climbing location on mainland Ireland. It sits approx 5 km from An Port road end and the walk in is along the wildest stretch of coast line in Ireland. I have been playing out on this area of coast since May 2008 and have made over 500 visits to the sea cliffs and sea stacks living along this coast, it really is an outstanding place to be. I have never failed to have fun on this coast in all my visits in fact it gets harder to leave and return to the real world on every visit.

DJ Locker Traverse film

 The above film shows the first visit to this remote sea cliff as Peter O' Toole joined in the nautical action for a 70 meter low level traverse above an equally tetchy ocean. The climbing on this route is of the same high quality as "Exposure Explosion," but being much closer to the sea it is prone to much more nautical action as the above film shows.

Glenlough Bay

Beyond The End's of the Earth

View from the crag

"Exposure Explosion" the route

Peter O' Toole on "DJ Locker Traverse"

 Louise O' Connor on "Exposure Explosion."