UCD Mountaineering Club

by Lorcan O'Sullivan. (Captain 1975/76)

I first heard about the UCD Mountaineering Club during the 1971/72 Mountain Leadership course. In those far off days a relatively high number of Club members instructed on or attended such courses. The UCD people on the course were always talking about this Club of theirs. In March 1972 I decided to try it out for myself. It was the sort of weather hill walkers dream about - cold, crisp, sunny and windless. I joined a small group doing the circuit of Glenmalure from Conavalla around to Lug. Despite a nail-biting, twilight descent of the Baravore and a lot of crawling through drainage ditches in pitch darkness I was hooked. This was the Club for me. It was to remain my Club for over a decade after that. One of the good things about the Glenmalure trip was the ready availability of cars. This was heaven, as I previously had to rely on the 44, 49A and 65 buses for most of my walks. Not only could you get to places like Glenmalure but (equally important for a penniless secondary school student) the cost of petrol money was less than the busfare to Enniskerry. Little did I know how soon I was going to find myself back at the mercy of CIE. Following the breakaway of older graduates in 1973 the Club was short of members and even shorter of cars. There were only 11 people in Kerry in Christmas '73, less than half the previous year's number. The car situation was even worse. On the way down I took the "soft" option of travelling from Killarney train station to Killorglin by bus and road walking from there to Glencar. The real hards and the truly poverty stricken walked all the way from Killarney. During the next few years the Club actively sought new recruits and by about 1976 numbers had returned to the levels of previous years.

As most of the new members were students the car shortage remained a problem. The Club had very little money and many a committee meeting was spent agonising over how many hired buses we could afford. The answer was not many, despite the discovery of Furlong's cheap if basic bus. To fill the buses and thus reduce our losses we did our best to find people to share them with. A trip to the Blackstairs for example was made possible by sharing with the Clogher Road Vocational School. Despite our best efforts most walks relied on public transport. Long road walks at the start and end of each day were all too familiar. Some people even got into the habit of carrying runners in their rucksacks for the road walks. Transport problems certainly did not prevent the Club doing a lot of hard, fast walking. Each Sunday saw a slow walk for beginners, but there was normally also a hard walk in which no mercy was shown. The "pub Sprint" was a feature of Club walks in the early seventies. At the end of a walk, when still about one or two miles from the pub, we regrouped. At the shout of "pub sprint" those who were still not completely exhausted raced each other to the pub.

We also rock climbed but our equipment and climbing standards were far below those of today. Few people could consistently lead above severe. We had not heard of an El, let alone dreamt of leading one. Malinbeg and the Burren had not yet come to prominence. When we ventured beyond Dalkey and Glendalough it was generally to the big inland crags - the Poisoned Glen, Lough Barra and Ben Corr. An outing that epitomises the period for me was a mass assault on Caveman's Delight, an 1100 foot, badly protected, V Diff on Ben Corr in the Twelve Bens. I was on the last of about four ropes of climbers. The first rope carried a peg hammer and three pegs. We had the only other peg hammer. They put the pegs in, one for every three hundred and seventy feet of climbing! The other ropes belayed on them as they passed and we took them out. At one stage we had to run out more than a full rope length without any main belay or even a runner. Needless to say it was well after dark by the time we got down. Towards the end of the seventies the passage of time again created a growing number of graduates in our ranks. They could now afford to buy cars and gear and they could afford to go abroad. Trips to Scotland and the Alps had been virtually unheard of in 1973 - 1975. After about 1976 the nine day Easter trip to Scotland became a well supported annual event. Most years saw at least one group head for the Alps or the Pyrenees, some to walk, others to climb.

The Club made considerable advances on the climbing front in the late seventies and early eighties. Most notably Keefe Murphy put up some pioneering routes on the Burren sea cliff which ranked amongst the hardest first ascents by any Irish Climbers. Clare Sheridan, who started climbing with the Club, went on to make a name as one of the country's top women climbers. There were unfortunately some fatal accidents. I would like to remember some of the people who walked with me in the Club and who have since died.

Some died on the hills, others elsewhere - Monica Henchey, Niall Kenny, Dympna Meaney, Se O'Brien and Catherine Sherry. May they rest in peace.