13 Mar 2022: Having already climbed all of the mountains on the western side of the Galtees that had points in the The All-Ireland Hillwalking Championships, we decided to give the Eastern Galtees a go. The weather was the only issue, a lot of rain and wintery conditions in the forecast for the weekend. However, the weather app gave some hope on Sunday morning and only showed an odd shower throughout the day so we decided to give it a try.
We planned to visit the following locations:
- Laghtshanaquilla
- Greenane
- Greenane West Top
- Galtybeg
- Cush
This was a total of 40 points in the challenge, which would put us in a reasonably good spot on the leaderboard once again. We dropped off Dad’s car at Clydagh Bridge Car Park and Mam drove us around the Galty range to a forest entrance near Kilcoran Lodge, our start point for the day.
We set off up the forestry road before veering off onto the open mountain. We followed a small stream up the gradual climb to Laghtshanaquila. There was a slight drizzle as we walked with plenty water underfoot from all the recent rain. On reaching the top we logged it and headed in the direction of Greenane and on route we stopped at Fearbreaga and made use of the stone cairn as shelter for our lunch. It looked bright and clear as we looked over the cairn wall but a fair wind seemed to be coming up from Lake Muskry.
Onwards towards Greenane, passing a few blotches of snow on our way, we were caught in our first passing shower of the day, strong pelting hail stones hitting us from the side with the small balls of ice stinging our faces. Luckily it passed away quickly and the blue skies were back with the breeze drying us off very quickly. We could see a long line of snow along the ridge of Galtybeg in the distance.
Next we made our way over to Grenane West and by the time we had reached Lachlan’s Castle the sun was beaming down on us once again. This section was quite boggy so we took care when crossing even though our boots were already saturated at this stage!
After logging Greenane West, we headed over to our second last peak of the day, Galtybeg. We endured another mighty hail shower as we made our way over to the base of galtybeg which offered some shelter from the elements. We made short work of the steep climb and by the time we were logging Galtybeg all of the rain and hail had blown off, leaving us once again with clear skies.
After Galtybeg we had only one destination left to tick off of our list, Cush. The jarring descent from Galtybeg towards Cush was followed by a steep but manageable climb to reach the top. From there we could see the remainder of snow all across the Galtee range, which had mainly collected in a few pockets. We took our time on the descent and enjoyed a refreshing can of Coke on the drive home happy with our well earned 40 points.
