It has become an annual event that I should go up Lugnaquilla with my sister Moira and her partner Joff on the day after Christmas. It is a moot point whether you call that St. Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day. In either case, the objective remains the same: to go up Lugnaquilla and back down.
We have never yet had a clear day at the summit, which says something about the Irish weather at this time of the year. We have wet weather, windy weather, cold weather, and combinations thereof, but it has somehow always been misty and cloudy at the top.
But we live in hope, and this year, the forecast was actually quite reasonable, so we arrived at Fenton’s pub at 10:00. Finton’s is in the glean, and the weather there, though cool was pleasant. The top of the mountain was shrouded in cloud, but that was OK.
And so we started out on the walk. I have definitely been eating too much of late, and the initial trudge up Camara Hill took the puff out of me. I was warm at that stage and decided to put my anorak into the rucksack before going on. Just after Camara Hill, the route is level for a short while, but then it ascends gradually. Soon, we were into the mist. The ground became frostier, and I took a moment to look back at the valley in sunshine below.
Going on, the air became colder and more windy as we went. It was time to put the anorak back on. It was not real snow on the ground, more a combination of frost, accumulated hailstones, and rime ice. As we went on up, passing through the rock garden stage of the route, the rocks also had some glatteis, just to make things interesting. But once past the rock garden, the summit plateau awaits. We met others on the way, people who had started before us, and were now coming down. The mist by now was positively Arctic in nature, and even 50m from the summit market, it was difficult to see where it was. But experience and dead reckoning brought us there, helped by the wind at our backs. On the windward side, the summit market was covered in rime ice, which is part of why it wasn’t easy to see.
We huddled around on the leeward side just long enough to take a few photos for the record, and to get a compass bearing. And then we were heading down again. Initially, it was difficult, heading into a biting wind, but even a small part of the descent took us out of that, into better conditions. We threaded our way back down through the rock garden, again taking care where there was glatteis on the rocks. And at last, we came down out of the cloud, out of the Arctic conditions, and back into something approaching sunshine.
Of course, we went into Fenton’s for a drink to celebrate that we had done this one more time. And with that done, the ritual is once again complete. We say goodbye to 2022, and look forwards to 2023.
Walkingman 