PMG Walk 72 - Maamturks Traverse. Day 15 in the hills! The previous 3 days in the hills were long and quite tough going but today certainly was stepped up a notch! I was parked overnight in Leenaun and woke at 3.30am and started walking at 4am! I was off to do what is considered the hardest mountain traverse in Ireland: The Maamturk Mountains! I wanted to be off the hills by 4pm so I would have enough daylight to hitch back to the car. I also thought it would take about 12 hours of walking. With 13 PMG summits and 3 non-PMG summits the rewards were high but the effort was big! Starting off with about 4 hours of night navigation was exciting but yet I was strangely nervous. I had heard stories about how hard the walk was, how treacherous the rock was when damp or wet! I was going to be alone in the dark and then for the rest of the day! Ah adventure! I started from the Leenaun side even though most start from the other side of the mountains. Why? Simply because the first few hills were more boggy and grass then rock and rumble, thus making the night navigation easier. The sunrise was spectacular and the walking was amazing. The views with the weather today were what we all want on a day in the hills! Great weather for the best part. It only got overcast the last few hours! 11 hours 6mins later I was done! Faster than I had hoped for! 41.40kms, 2942m ascent and 2882m descent! Awesome day but I must admit I thought it would be harder. Certainly in the top 4 of my hardest walks done in Project Mountain Goat, but not the hardest. With that said, in bad weather this would be even harder!