Nephin Beg in the snow

Storm clouds roll over Lough Conn towards Nephin Beg mountain (and me!) earlier today.

This time last year, I was recovering from one of the best walks of 2007 – I had just finished the Derryclare ‘horseshoe’ of the Twelve Bens in Connemara on a sunny, clear day in early April. Last April was a warm, sunny month, which raised everyone’s hopes of a long hot summer. Some hope.

There was no danger of sunburn today. April 2008 has been characterised by hard rain and cold winds so far, and this weekend, the rain turned to hail and snow. The Walking Club were heading down to Flagmount to do a walk around Lough Graney (a great walk, by the way – I did a couple there when I was with the Loughrea Walking Club) and some of the club members were planning to walk across the Maumturks from Corcóg to Maméan. I didn’t fancy Connemara this Sunday – the Connemarathon was on and the roads out to Oughterard and beyond would be full of masochists runners [the scariest folk are the ultra-marathon runners who run 39.3 miles because an ordinary marathon just isn’t enough].

So we went to a mountain that I’ve been meaning to climb for years but just never around to it – Nephin Beg. Today, it stood out like a Mayo tribute to Mount Fuji – the top of its conical shape covered in snow. We decided to do a loop around the ridge on the north side of the mountain. Nephin is a fun climb – just straight up all the way – and a reasonable day out. It weighs in at 805 metres (and you start the climb a mere 60 metres above sea level), and the views, on a good day, are spectacular. On a good day.

Stone pattern laid out at the summit of Nephin Beg mountain, Co. Mayo.

We started climbing around midday and the sky was clear. As we got higher, the wind got colder and stronger. By the time we got to the ridge at the top, the wind was brutal. And the hailstones arrived – the hailstones were flying so fast, they caused real pain rattling off the back of my legs. Thankfully, the hailstones gave way to snow, and we decended back into the valley under the quiet blanket of snowfall. And as we did, we wandered straight into a fight. Two Red Grouse were fighting over territory and were squawking for all their worth. [Red Grouse are both an endangered species in Ireland, and a legitimate target – i.e. it is legal to shoot them during a certain period. Hunters are not the principle problem for grouse – it is sheep. Grouse need relatively tall heather growth to thrive, and the practice of grazing on hills tends to remove the heather cover. That is why farmers in Connemara have been told that they will have to remove their sheep from the hills for part of the year to allow grouse numbers to increase.]

It took exactly 4 hours to do the loop (that includes plenty of stops to take pictures), and as we returned to the car, the sun broke through the clouds and bathed us in sunshine for the final part of our journey.

There’s a picture of Nephin in sunshine here and here [this picture shows the loop that we did today].