There aren’t many opportunities to hike in snow in Connemara every year, and I haven’t got tired of the novelty yet. Last weekend, wintery showers dusted the tops of all of the mountain ranges across Connacht and it provided an excellent opportunity for hiking. There was more frozen hail than actual snow, and the deepest drifts were no more than a foot deep, but on a cold January day with continuous sunshine for the entire day and nary a shower of anything, it was great day to be out and about. A group of the Galway Walking Club did a circuit around Letterbreckaun in the Maumturks mountains – starting with a 2km walk along the Western Way and then ascending the far side of Letterbreckaun and hiking east, descending alongside the series of waterfalls on the west side of Barrlugrevagh.
As much fun as day in the hills can be, some care is needed. On our way up to Letterbreckaun’s summit (it is 667 metres high), we stopped at a spot where there was plenty of snow. A few of us made ‘snow angels’ (this was mine) and that degenerated into a snowball fight. While we were messing about, one of our number trudged up and announced that he had sunk waist deep. We assumed he meant snow, but it wasn’t. The Maumturks are full of water and boggy pools, and the cold weather had caused them to be covered in snow and frozen over. As the picture above shows, our man got halfway across a suspiciously flat area when he went through ice and sank. He’s tall (and the pool was relatively shallow) so he was able to extract himself and exit sideways and back from whence he came (as the footsteps in the picture show). The rest of us completely missed what would have been a good photo-op, though it wasn’t so much fun for him to spend the next 3 hours or so hiking in wet gear.
Note: the mountain in the background, on the other side of the Inagh Valley, is Benbaun (Binn Bhán) – the highest of the Twelve Bens at 729metres. This picture shows the view of Letterbreckaun (it is the leftmost mountain in the range across the valley) from the Bens, taken six and a half years ago