2007-10-03 20:10:38
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| (Expand pics) |
Not just back...
...back in black!Anyway... would anyone know the link to the MV newsletter?
2007-10-01 00:33:27
Hopeless
I am pleased to say, MacClimb you are beyond hope, at least if I have anything to do with it. And yes you are right, if I come back as a claymore I know where I am going. Check out "Sassenach" and "Fundament". You are right of course about Alex 92. He is in fact 92 and just like Frankie Albert ( no, not the one from Ardglass) he is back. Spookeeeeee .....2007-09-12 13:56:20
Shorn of the head
Hark the heinous herbivores hail! hacking heavenly habitats to hell!!Hats off (cotton ones) to fleece corespondent quick dra mc cra for an insult wrapped in an aside below a misconception. Displaced crofters for heather still a sore point then!! ps it was hazel thickets baaaad scran to them. pps on a different hard tack is Alex really 92 ?fair play to him he probably was at hedge school with Frodo
2007-09-10 10:40:57
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| Spot the top (Expand pics) |
The Boola Pinnacle
This is the view from the base of the pinnacle down to the lakes.It does not show the top of this rock which is continued up from the right of the photo.
This is approximately the vantage point in the Times photo.
2007-09-10 10:34:26
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| Spot the walking stick (Expand pics) |
The Boola Pinnacle
The photo in the Times does not do this rock outcrop justice and curiously misses the actual top completely.Here is one from the small shoulder to Carrignagower.
2007-09-10 10:26:44
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| The Pinnacle from the top of the Coum (Expand pics) |
Irelands Inn Pinn
Some of you may have seen the piece by John G O'Dwyer in "An Irishman's Dairy" on August 28th last. It sets out a potted history of Munros and the sport of "Munro-bagging" in Scotland where he states there are no less than 284 officially recognised.The most difficult of these is the "Inn Pinn", a blade of rock on Sgurr Dearg which can only by accessed by rock-climbing. The writer goes on to say that in ireland bagging all of our 14 Munros isn't an enormous task and poses the question " Can a reasonably fit man or woman ascending hands-in-pocket-style reach every summit on the Irish mainland?".The Big Gun is suggested and then dismissed because scrambling to its top is relatively easy.
Howling ridge, Primroses, Mystic and Carrot are dismissed because there are easier alternative approaches.
The writer offers an alternative "summit" in the form of a great blade of rock he names as " the Boola Pinnacle" in the Comeraghs. This caught my interest as it does not appear in the Mountainviews list or indeed on any list of summits I am aware of. I had to investigate. From the photo I was fairly sure of the location in the Boolaclogagh Valley as one of the Coum Iarthar Loughs is visible.
My initial guess was somewhere around S 318 124 which turned out not to be right although the photo I took from this location shows " the Pinnacle" quite clearly on the left hand side standing approximately 50 meters above the lakes.
I walked down to the lakes and began a steep but totally manageable climb up to the base of the" Pinnacle" along a well worn track. Standing on the saddle between it and the slopes of Carrignagower I agree that it is formidable wall of rock and also that it requires rock-climbing to reach the top, but does it stand high enough above the saddle to be a summit in its own right?, sadly no in my opinion.
I took the elevation of the saddle averaged over 400 readings at 634 meters and using a laser (no I didn't climb it, I'd be too afraid) measured the top at 10.29 meters above that.
An impressive outcrop and worth looking out for at S31372 12263 nonetheless.
So the question remains are there any truly inaccessable summits out there, I await your suggestions with interest. And to Mr O'Dwyer? there are 840 summits listed on Mountainviews over 400 meters if you feel in need of a challange.
2007-09-06 11:51:53
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| The Devil's Coachroad on Slieve Beg, Co. Down (Expand pics) |
Devil's Coachroad
The Devil's Coachroad is a scree-strewn gully on Slieve Beg in the Mourne Mountains. Satanic names are common in mountain landscapes and are usually of a humorous or ironic nature. Often it is possible to imagine the story that might have prompted the name just from the name itself and a knowledge of the topography. In the case of the Devil's Coachroad, it no doubt comes from the infeasibility of driving any vehicle up this exhausting scree-slope. The Devil is well provided for in the mountains of Ireland. He has a punchbowl on Mangerton, a ladder and a looking glass below Carrauntoohil, and there is the Devil's Bit near Templemore in Co. Tipperary. He even has his mammy on hand in Connacht (The Devil’s Mother). I wonder does he go home to her at weekends with a big bag of washing? Britain also has a share of diabolical paraphernalia. In Snowdonia the Prince of Darkness does his own cooking in the Devil’s Kitchen below the Glyders. Further south in Wales, near Aberystwyth, is Devil’s Bridge, noted for the spectacular waterfalls. The Devil’s Chair is the summit of the Stiperstones in Shropshire, while the Devil’s Elbow was a bend (now straightened) at the summit of the road through the Cairngorms from Braemar to Glen Shee. Scotland is particularly rich in such associations: here you can find the Devil’s Cauldron, the Devil’s Beeftub, the Devil’s Thrashing Floor and the Devil’s Barn Door, to name but a few. See Peter Drummond's "Scottish Hill and Mountain Names", now re-published as "Scottish Hill Names: Their Origin and Meaning". Perhaps the most bizarre of these fiendish names lies outside Europe altogether. On the salt flats of Death Valley in California is a rough, ankle-twisting terrain resembling a giant rockery. It is appropriately named the Devil’s Golf Course. Paul2007-09-05 20:54:30
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| Poster (Expand pics) |
Mountain Rescue Table Quiz
Following on the success of last year, UCDMC is organising another table quiz to raise a few bob for the Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team (www.dwmrt.ie). Teams of four are only 40 euro which gets you a fantabulous evening with the possibility of some great prizes from Fifty Three Degrees North and Berghaus. Like last year we’ll have plenty to keep you entertained with a video round, a music round, a brainteaser round and a mountain round (don’t worry the mountain round will be a lot easier this time…). We’ll also have a raffle (donations of prizes would be very welcome) and hopefully we’ll be selling some very special, limited edition, hand-printed t-shirts. And it being a student sponsored event, there’ll be beer….
Details are below – email mountainrescuetablequiz@gmail.com to reserve a team as places are limited. Bring your friends, classmates, workmates or family and if you’re in a local club, please spread the word there.
Date: Thurs 4TH OCTOBER
Time: 8pm
Location: M.O’Brien’s Pub, Sussex Terrace, Upper Lesson Street: http://tinyurl.com/26afa3
More details: www.ucd.ie/mountain
Prizes kindly sponsored by Fifty Three Degrees North and Berghus: www.53degreesnorth.ie
2007-09-05 17:34:06
Devil's Coach Road - Slieve Beg
Any idea how the Devil's Coach Road got its name?2007-09-03 00:43:54
WOOLLY ARGUMENT
Some bonehead was banging on about erosion. “Dolomites… Peru... Kathmandu…” Everywhere you could name-drop into 30 seconds - with the effect on Cra of nails on a blackboard. Lord spare us from such fools, who protect Giant Hogweed in Oxford Street, while indescribable horrors befall brother human beings on their own doorstep. Also in the company, is McG - of few words but each, incisive. Ossified brain-pan clatters on about catastrophe - and up pipes McG - “Artificial. Artificial - it’s all artificial”. Reader, within living memory of your great-great-grandfather’s great-great-grandfather (-ish) the barren rock that gneiss-noggin is sitting on, would be under a verdant sward or dappled by sunbursts from larch, ash, oak and birch. Wild boar are scolding their weanlings and bear and bobcat hold sway across the diversest of flora and fauna. Within a couple of centuries, another bone-head, inside a pullover with legs, has turned the natural magic that mesmerised celts, iberians, vikings, britons, normans…. into the romantic wilderness that now occupies empty heads. These lummoxes are back in the Mournes - no more watering holes for us, unless you want crypto spirididoodle to bury itself so far into your offal department that the only cure is to shoot yourself with a silver bullet. A tenuous link - what are our views about the erudite, literate, endlessly knowledgable and thoroughly affable Nicholas Crane being replaced in the Beeb’s COAST, by a Scottish corner boy with bad hair and even worse dental work? Crane’s own prog yesterday covered some oul English doll, looking for England on 2 wheels, and 2 legs: and the thesis? Get up off your “h” and find real Ireland instead of l’Hotel du Lac. However, if you like Peru, go back there - and drink plenty of the water.
