We were headed down to Kerry again, planning to complete the Purple Mountains & The MacGillycuddy’s Reeks, with a sleep in-between! We logged Musheramore and Mullaghanish on our way to The Black Valley (Our start point for The Purple Mountains).
We set off for The Purples from just below Black Lake, following the road for a short while before turning left to face the steep mountainside. And up that steep mountainside we went! A bit of zigzagging was necessary to help with the climb, and we were extremely lucky the ferns weren’t fully grown, or it would have been a lot harder! We skirted around Tomies Mountain North Top as it wasn’t part of the challenge, and continued onto the much larger Tomies Mountain instead.
From Tomies, we headed straight for Purple Mountain Northeast. But before we began the final climb, we skirted around it to reach Shehy Mountain first, a sneaky mountain that was a bit out of our way!
Then we headed back to Purple Mountain Northeast, our penultimate log of the evening.
From there, Purple Mountain was easy to reach, following the ridge. We could see a rescue operation over on the Reeks and we heard later that all were removed from the mountain safely.
Then, we descended back to the “Head Of The Gap”, passing Glas Lough on our way. We had stashed a bike at a House Ruin just below “The Head Of The Gap” so Dad cycled (freewheeling!) back to the car and then returned to get me.
We put the bike into hiding again for the night and set off on our first Carcation for 2022, staying at the Hydro Road Car Park.
Once we had some breakfast, We were walking for 7:30am the next morning, with hopes to complete the The MacGillycuddy’s Reeks Mountain Challenge.
We started off up the Hydro Road, leaving it to begin the climb to Cnoc Íochtair, our first log of the day at 08:53.
We continued on, logging Skregmore and taking a short detour to Knockbrinnea East Top before reaching Beenkeragh.
To get to Carrauntoohil, we had to cross The Bones, a narrow and extremely rocky ridge, good practice for The Big Gun!
We had to go out to reach Caher and then come back again to continue on with the rest of the challenge. We dropped our bags on the way over and collected them on the way back, which sped us up a bit.
Next up was Cnoc na Toinne. We passed the top of The Devil’s Ladder and after a short climb we were logging. Following the same ridge we reached (With a lot of ups and downs) Cnoc an Chuillin, Maolán Buí & Cnoc na Péiste. We had a bit of lunch on Cnoc na Péiste, eyeing up The Big Gun
Before, we had traversed the Big Gun before from the other direction but we found it tricky from this side, and the fact that the conditions had now changed to mist and fog made it even harder but after a bit of scrambling and over and backs we managed it. Will definitely take another look at the route for the next time.
We ended up having to lose a lot of height, so we ascended from from the ESE to Cruach Mhór. The summmit is marked by a large grotto, which made for an interesting background for our Peakhunter log picture!
We were on the downward stretch now, we had the all the highest mountains ticked off!
It was mostly downhill to reach our second last mountain, Cnoc an Bhráca.
To get from Cnoc an Bhráca to Cnoc na dTarbh, you had to drop down 100m, before climbing back up another 50m! We probably wouldn’t have found this too bad if our legs were fresh, but after 20km walking it felt pretty sickening!
But luckily, once we reached Cnoc na dTarbh, that was it, we had completed The MacGillycuddy’s Reeks Mountain Challenge. Now, we just had to get down!
We had planned to descend via Drishana to The Gap Of Dunloe and then walk the road back down to the bike, but opted to come down the face of Cnoc na dTarbh instead. It was pretty steep, but we definitely saved a lot of distance.
15 Peaks later we were back to the bike once again and Dad set off for the 20K cycle to get the car and come back to collect me. Killarney McDonald’s was a welcome sight after such an action packed weekend and then home to get some sleep, with the satisfaction of finishing on top of the Leaderboard once again!
