[RWD version 1 ] Reports that I had read about Carrick Mountain mentioned the difficulty of finding the summit because of the forestry plantation and overgrowth. I also became aware of the many bike trails now on this mountain. There are three hikes currently showing on MountainViews from the northern approach, and one from a minor road on the west. Not quite knowing what to expect, our group decided to try the south-eastern approach from Glenealy.
There's good parking available at Glenealy Community Centre/GAA club on L1096 just off the main road. There's 900 m of road walking on Ballymanus Lane to the forest entrance. The mountain is heavily forested with a large number of trails, predominantly on a northeast-southwest axis, but with connecting artery trails that tend to be more minor. We decided to head for the most northerly rock outcrop, known as Cobbler's Rock, T238947. This was a good decision because the approach to it is not covered in trees, and the views are quite rewarding. We had a panoramic view from there to the next rocky outcrop at T235944 . We then took the safer option of a forestry road, thus missing the summit which we didn't actually see even though we were quite close to it. Further on, there were two more smally rocky outcrops in the southern part of the forestry, one of which we decided to climb, T227933. It wasn't worth the effort! From there, we eschewed the broader, winding forestry tracks and instead chose the steeper but very minor arteries that headed south-east, before rejoining a major track that brought us back to the forest entrance. Thankfully, we didn't meet any bikers, but there was plenty evidence of their scrambling activities.
I am advised that there are four peaks on Carrick Mountain, with Cobler's Rock probably being the most prominent though not the highest. We were very pleased with the first half of our hike, but we could probably improve on the second half by, for example, taking the somewhat rougher ground to the summit, and perhaps then staying on higher ground above the forestry for more of the trail. A good trail but some tweaking could make it better.