Cold Mountain
You have no idea!!!!!
3rd of February, 2008
For the second week in a row the Mount Argus Scouts took to the mountains. This time it was a training hike attended by the star scout award group, mono and myself and our destination was the tallest mountain in Leinster, Lugnaquilla.
The good people at Met Éirinn forecast a bad day but we were not to be deterred, it was the top or bust.
We set off from the car park at Fenton’s to tackle Lugnaquilla from the west side and were soon at the summit of Camera hill, our first summit of the day. It was at this stage that the weather turned decidedly nasty. When we started out we were hiking into a crosswind blowing from the south at about 30km per hour but when we reached the summit of Camera it had started to rain as well. Rain at that speed stings like nothing else. Hoods were pulled up, scarves were used as facemasks and we moved on. After about twenty minutes of driving rain (just enough to get everything soaked) it started to snow.
It kept snowing until we got to the summit.
We stopped for an early lunch and despite some complaints of being cold and tired we decided to push on and see it through (though to be honest, at that stage it wouldn’t have taken much more to convince me to turn around). The wind died down for the long walk across the ridge before we came to the final climb to the summit plateau. This was a short climb (about 100 metres) but made treacherous by snow and ice. At the summit plateau we were again, battered by the crosswind.
At this stage the temperature was well below freezing.
We were on the summit for about 30 minutes and in that time our packs became frozen, our jackets became frozen, even our hydration systems became frozen. It was getting late in the day and with the risk of hypothermia setting in we picked up our pace and rapidly made the return journey.
