Brandon Ridge

Thursday April7th

I had a good couple of days out last week. Thursday I went into the Hags Glen under Carrauntoohil with Frank to explore a couple of rock crags. The day was quite hot and we enjoyed a few hours rockclimbing on crags that are to the best of my knowledge completely ignored. One was about 15mtrs high that gave a couple of nice routes and the other was about 35mtrs and was quite difficult but would give a serious test to top grade climbers with lots of overhangs and roofs to be negotiated. We climbed up to the third level and saw lots of other places that we are going to look at in the future.

Friday April 8th



Sea fog over Cloghane

On Friday I headed to Mount Brandon with James Moore. We parked in the village of Cloghane and climbed Brandon via the Faha Ridge. The ridge itself is nice and exposed in places and the far side of it has a great sustained scramble with some quite difficult steps. The day was warm and sunny with a real touch of summer about it. It was a good thing that I remembered to put on the sunscreen before we started. We had a  nice lunch on the summit where we enjoyed the tremendous views and then headed  along the ridge towards the Conner Pass. It was a big day out involving 26 kilometers and 1800 meters climbing in total. A lovely bonus was that when we arrived at the pass there was an icecream van there so we sat and enjoyed a delicious 99 in the sun. We continued on up the other side to the summit of Slievenea and then down to the road and the three kilometer walk back to the car. We arrived tired but satisfied eight hours after we started.



Along the ridge with Brandon behind



Towards Brandon Creek and the Blaskets

The view from Slievenea



James looking accross the Faha Ridge towards Brandon