Saint Patrick’s Day and Climbing in Ireland

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and many Canadians have ties to Ireland. Here in Canada, we have lots of Irish-themed climbs, such as Guinness Gully WI4 and Guinness Stout WI4+ in the Rockies and Thomasina Pidgeon’s Lucky Charms V11 in Squamish. The last one is a stretch.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Here is a rad shot by @timbanfield of climbers on Guinness Gully in BC! #iceclimbing #grippedmagazine

A post shared by Gripped Magazine (@grippedmagazine) on Mar 17, 2017 at 9:13am PDT

There is even a Mount St. Patrick in Ontario, which is a small town at the base of a 300-metre elevation rise. While Ireland is not on many climber’s minds as a place to travel to for a climbing trip, there are countless classic routes.

There is a newish guidebook to Ireland called Rock Climbing in Ireland, which details all of the major areas starting clockwise from Dublin. For a comprehensive list to areas and climb in Ireland, see here.

Irish climber Ian McKeever once held the record for fastest time completing the Seven Summits and Irish climber Noel Hanna is the first to complete the list including descents to sea level. In 2004, Dr. Clare O’Leary was the the first Irish woman to climb Mount Everest and go on to complete the Seven Summits.

A few years ago, Alex Honnold visited Ireland and free soloed at Fair Head. Watch below.