- Saturday morning at Base Camp, Keem Strand

- Ready to go from Base Camp, Keem Strand

- Resting at Bunnatreva Lough after descending from the Croghaun Ridge

- Descent to High Camp at Lough Nakeeroge

Connaught Mountain Pursuit Challenge 2008

– Achill Island

- Early in the hike

 

We reached Achill Island some time after eleven o'clock on Friday night. Not too late, as these things go, and since base camp was only three minutes walk from the car park (an unheard of luxury on an MPC) we had our tents up and were in bed not long after midnight.
Saturday morning in Base Camp is always a bit of an eye opener. You invariably get into camp in the middle of the night, and only the next morning do you see the towering cliffs that surround you, or the interminable bog that you had to walk through to get there. This morning, it was a bracing sea view that greeted us as we crawled out of our tents. The ragged cliffs of the south side of Achill, and the sun beaming down on a wide tract of the Atlantic ocean. Lovely stuff. Pity about the thick cloud that was sitting right down on the mountains we had to climb, but you can't have everything.

Since it wasn't actually blowing a gale or lashing rain (for a change) we had our tents down in no time and were soon ready for the off. There were only three scouts on the team for this outing: Rob Kelly, Jonathan Ryan and Brian Flynn, who was on his first mountain pursuit. Then there was me, Alan Monaghan, who was most certainly not on his first mountain pursuit, and our man on the staff, James Cullen, who's also been around the block a few times.

We were designated team Tango, which meant we were one of the later teams to leave Base Camp. Our route took us first to the old Marconi station that had Keem Bay on one side and, well, America on the other. A quick turn around here, and we followed the dizzying cliffs westward towards the very farthest end of the island. This was all fine and dandy until we had to drop down to the col before the big mountain, Croghaun. Our path was blocked by a very marshy lake, and a stream that looked harmless enough until you went near it and found yourself up to your knees in muck.

In any event, we got across eventually, and set off up the mountain. This looked hard, and it was hard. It was steep and rocky and... steep and rocky and... well, you get the picture. An hour and a half after leaving the col, we eventually crept up to the top, which was not only steep and rocky, but extremely windy as well. Here we were reunited with James who was manning the checkpoint and having various appendages blasted off by the howling wind. We didn't hang around, but set off along the clifftop to Tonacroghaun, where we were waved on again, and battled forward through the cloud, with the wind in our teeth and the knowledge that there was a very large cliff lurking in the cloud, just ten feet to our left.

It was aday when you needed to know how to navigate. The cloud was thick, the ground was rough, and visibility was very poor. Fortunately, we were able to manage it, and soon left the crowds behind, picking our way along the "handrail feature " (i.e. large cliff) until we eventually reached our jumping off point from the ridge. This was billed as a gully which would take us down to the flatter ground below the cloud, but the guy at the checkpoint admitted that "slightly sheltered slope" was more like it. We had to wait a few minutes for the team in front to get clear (in case we knocked rocks down on them) and then started our descent. A little while later we dropped out of the cloud and found ourselves in a beautiful sunny corrie, with the sea glittering away to the west and north and not much of a wind to talk about.

Keeping on our course, we picked our way across the corrie and started our descent to High Camp. It was slow going because Brian was having serious trouble with his boots, but we still found ourselves to be about the fifth team to reach camp. Since we'd left Base Camp in about seventeenth place, this was a bit puzzling, but at least it meant we were able to get a decent spot to pitch our tents!
We had to wait a while to start dinner because James was still out on the route. Three hours later he eventually showed up, telling tales of poor navigation and teams following one another. This was how we came to move so many places up the table when it came to getting into High Camp.At the end of the day eight teams couldn't find the checkpoint to drop off the ridge, and had to be rounded up. Since James was one of the ones who  had to do the rounding up, he was in dire need of a cup of tea by the time he eventually got to camp.
With dinner disposed of (chicken curry for the scouts, chicken in oyster and ginger sauce for the leaders - tres posh, don't you know) there was nothing for it but to beat a retreat into the tents. There was a strong wind blowing down off the mountain - gusting hard enough to blow one of our Hydra tents flat at one point, forcing us to use our walking rope anchor it securely to a boulder - so it was no night for standing around the place. That's one of the little known benefits of the MPCs - you often get to stay in bed for twelve hours at a stretch.
Next day we were up at about nine and had time for a scouts own conducted by John Barron, the MPC coordinator, before making the short walk to the cliff edge to look down into a little cove, where we could see seals and their pups playing in the surf a hundred and fifty feet below. Not something you usually see on a mountaineering event!

The weather was fine early on, but by the time we had climbed up to our last col and started the final stage of our walk out, it had turned decidedly drizzly. Still, at that stage, there was nothing for it but to put our heads down and slog it out for the last few kilometers. We were all well and truly soaked by the time we got to the end, but within a few minutes we had all changed into dry clothes, and soon we were on the road and driving back to civilisation. Or Dublin, at any rate.