The Irish Alpinists did not neglect their homeland hills, but they treated them principally as practice grounds for the Alps, and their attentions did not give rise to a vigorous school of local climbers as was the case in Great Britain...' In comparison to their Alpine exploits it is also unlikely that their mountain travels in Ireland would have warrented publication.
Nevertheless, some of the very highly renowned Irish alpinists did record some of their mountain journeys in Ireland.
John Ball had been climbing in the Alps from as early as 1840, well before the establishment of the Alpine Club. He was appointed in 1846 as Assistant Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland and as second Poor Law Commissioner in 1849, which appointments gave him the opportunity of visiting remote parts of the country. It was during these years that he recounts a number of visits to various mountain regions of Cork and Kerry. These were not so much mountaineering trips as geological trips to locate and examine evidence of the passage of glaciers, similar to what he had done in the Alps. Notice of the former existance of small glaciers in the County of Kerry was the title of the article he subsequently wrote for the Journal of the Geological Society of Dublin (1848-50). He reports on the signs of glaciation around Lough Doon, near Connor Pass, and he walked along the moraine that extends down to the lower Lough Beirne. Similar features occurred around Lough Cruite,
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| Near Lough Cruite |
near Mt Brandon, and on the NE side of Purple Mountain, where its moraine '..
offers to the pedestrian the only path where his foot does not sink in the spongy masses of sphagnum..' Local men may have accompanied him as guides but this is not recorded.
All this was taking place at least ten years before the formation of the Alpine Club, of which he was appointed as President, in 1857.
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Eagle Rock
(Courtesy NLI) |
John Tyndall's Hours of exercise in the Alps has a chapter on Killarney where he recounts his climb of 'Carrantual', Mangerton ('Mangerton is a stupid mountain') and Purple Mountain. As in the Alps he used a local man as guide on such climbs and recorded that he paid 'the moderate sum of three and sixpence...' for the service. This was in 1860 and when Con Moriarty, about forty years later, offered the same service he was being paid five shillings. By the 1930s local guides were being paid about ten shillings. (see IMEHS Journal Vol 4). In this chapter Tyndall gives, what appears to be, the earliest account of Rock Climbing in Ireland: 'Various bits of climbing were accomplished during my stay, and almost in every case in opposition to the guides. The Eagle Rock for example, a truly nobel mass, and others, were climbed, amid emphatic enunciations of "impossible". (This may in fact be Eagle's Nest)
This was not Tyndall's only sojourn in Ireland's hills. Some four years later, (Easter 1865) he undertook a 'walking holiday' in northern Ireland with his friend Tom Hirst. They walked from Larne to Glenarm along the coast and over the moors to Cushendall. They used a local knowledgeable man as guide, a Mr Dixon, and went clambering over the causeway and wandering from headland to headland along the coast but no mention is made of Fair Head! Continuing to Donegal they climbed Muckish and Errigal with a local lad ' to carry our coats'. At Slieve League ' ..John descended one of the steepest portions to the water's edge and then ascended again at a still steeper place. The guide dared not follow him....John emerged safely at the very highest point of the cliffs. His wonderous feats of climbing already forms the subject of talk in the whole neighbourhood'. (From Hirst's diary).
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| Sliabh Liag |
(full account in Irish Mountain Log Autumn 2022 No 143).
Tyndall's climbing in Kerry and Donegal are likely to be the earliest accounts of climbing in Ireland and his book, which went to many editions, is likely to have promoted the tourist attractions of the Kerry region.
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