Kanturk Hillwalkers and Mountain Climbers | Blog

On Saturday 23 June the annual Club nighttime climb took place. Our destination was the West Pap. As the last of the night owls were heading to their beds we left town at 01.00 heading for Clonkeen. We passed through the sleeping towns and villages eventually arriving at the parking spot at the start of the climb. Initially, there was great interest in the climb, but people dropped out one by one, until there were only four left all male. We were amply rewarded for our efforts. At the car park, we geared up and fitted our head torches. The night was balmy as we made our way upwards. As we gained altitude the twinkling lights of Killarney came into view. We proceeded at a steady pace as conditions underfoot were excellent and the route was gradual. Time on our side we decided to rest up in the lee of a rocky outcrop and had some refreshments.We didn’t want to summit too early. We had the mountain to ourselves save for a few startled sheep, whose eyes glowed in our headl...

 On Sunday Mar. 26th we had an absolute fantastic day out on The Paps with a group of 13 doing the trip. All the way around we had blue skies overhead with views stretching to the limit on all sides from the Galtees to the North East with The Reeks just behind us and on our South side you could see all the way into the depths of West Cork.  The only bad thing you could say was at the top of both peaks it was extremely windy and it was no day for hanging around too long but one thing the wind did too was to dry the place out as the ground conditions were good and dry. The Paps Loop Link  The route we took was our usual one in that we started at the cleared away forest entrance near Clydagh Bridge which is on the Cork side of Glenflesk & just off the main road from Cork/Macroom to Killarney which leads us on to a fine tough opening 45 minutes which is always testing leading onto the first peak before heading along for the first Western Pap and then down into the ...

On Sunday Oct the 23rd we set off on a mystery tour so as we left Kanturk we did not know where we were setting off to. We met the rest of the group in Rathmore and we folloewed on the lead car. A few miles away the mystery was starting to unveil. We were heading towars the northern side of The Paps. We eventually ended up at the gateway to the mountain road at Shrone Lake. This road disects the mountains and can lead you out to the other side near Glenflesk & where we usually start the hike up The Paps.But this day instead of going right for The Paps we were turning left. In tthe days group we had 9 which was a good number, we started our hike on the mountain roadway & after a few hundred yards we turned left up Shrone More and headed on upwards towards Knocknabro, at this stage of our the morning mist was still down low & it was windy as well so we did not go to the top of this one.Once we got to the top of the first climb most of the day consisted of lots of rambl...

A good group of 11 of us set off from Kanturk on a trip to The Paps passing through Rathmore, taking a left turn at Barraduff for Glenflesk, taking a left turn at Glenflesk towards Macroom and a few miles over the road we started to follow the signs for Clydagh Bridge and Shrone Lake. On the way back it was extremely foggy around Rathmore but after that it seemed to clear and that the fog was lifting. We got to our starting point where it was still cloudy and foggy which stayed with us all the way to the first, West summit. What we noticed here was the fact that Northern side was clear but because there was very little wind, there was nothing to blow away the fog and cloud from the Southern side. But the views from the Summit were stunning, we were over the cloud and fog. Looking west towards Mangerton and Macgillycuddy's Reeks Group photo on The Paps West There were spectacular views on three sides, all the way back to the Kerry mountains on one side ...