Mweelrea

wheres me jumpa

Hot on the heels of your great advice for the Lug, I am now seeking advice regarding Mweelrea. I will be walking this in the next few weeks and I would appreciate any tips/advice/recollections etc.

Cheers

Jumpa

Alun

Difficult navigation at the top, with some quite steep cliffs, if the mist comes down, which is nearly all the time

The route we took took us up a steep gully up onto Ben Bury from the road at the north end of Doo Lough. Couldn't see your hand in front of your face, quite literally. From there you can follow the ridge onto the top of Mweelrea, and then on down over a smaller unnamed peak back down to the road near Bundorragha. 'Only' about 15km in total but it took us 8 hours which kind of tells you what conditions were like.

You'll need to split cars if you're going to do this though, as it's not a circular route and I'm not sure whether there even is a suitable circular route (others here may know otherwise?).

If you get good weather, the views over Killary Harbour are spectacular though.

I can send you a GPS track of the route we took if you like?

wheres me jumpa

Cheers Alun,

When you say GPS track.......do i need GPS for it?! If so, do not send!

My sister works in the Delphi lodge up there so we have a good starting point. She was saying there is/are well marked route(s) up Mweelrea. True?

Alun

wheres me jumpa wrote:

When you say GPS track.......do i need GPS for it?! If so, do not send!

No, I meant a map with the route we took overlaid on it.

My sister works in the Delphi lodge up there so we have a good starting point. She was saying there is/are well marked route(s) up Mweelrea. True?

Not sure, really. The route we took was easy enough to follow alright, although I wouldn't say there was really a well worn track. Coming down off Mweelrea was fairly well trodden certainly, although the mist had lifted by then which made it easy to navigate.

'm not sure which route you'd follow if you were starting off from Delphi, but from the map it looks like you could get up onto the same ridge a bit to the south-east of where we went up and follow it around in the same way. If you were just to do Mweelrea from there, it looks a bit dodgy on the map with lots of very close together contour lines, although there might be route northwards up from the little lough at the bottom.

Anyway, if your sister works there, I'm sure there'll be plenty of people with more local knowledge of routes up than I have. Good luck with the weather, anyway!

disco biscuit

I climbed Mweelrea in 1985 and I found it very easy.I climbed it from a place near Talamh Ban.To get there as you leave Louisburg go in the direction of Kiladoon but instead of turning right for Kiladoon keep going straight and after some distance stop and start walking through fields.You will see the mountain anyway and there is now danger of going in the wrong direction.I don't think I had to put my hands on the ground at all as I climbed it although I might have done.
Regards,
Ger

The Gus

Hello there,

I'm heading up towards Mweelrea in a few weekends time. Do you still have your map you were offering Jumpa?

Could you post it to me?

Fair Play

Gus

paulocon

Another post looking for that map if at all possible.
Not tackling it until next year but would be great to get hold of the map..

Alun

PM sent.

tingri

If you want to do a loop, you can start off at Delphi. You can take the coach road that goes behind it up a little and aim for the left of the lake on the map. I went straight for the lake and it was fairly wet and boggy there so I'd imagine that it would not be great at this time of year. So if you keep left, you should start ascending just before the lake. Nice sheltered area there for some lunch then before you hit the ridge towards the summit.

If visibility is not good on the way to the top, it can be a bit dodgy as the path is right near the edge with a long drop down to the lake. From the top, continue down the saddle and onto the ridge walk that will bring you back towards delphi again. There are some exposed places along the ridge that could be dodgy in bad visibility.

burly

Hi Alun,

Any chance of passing on your map, be much appreciated! I have a Garmin GPS if you could send in that format or else just a standard map would be great!

Thanks

Alun

PM Sent.

jusmeig

Hi guys...

Going to be climbing Mweelrea soon and just wondering if by any chance anyone has a SATMAP Active 10 route?

Probably going to take the route detailed here also.

Cheers,

J

burly

Dont have any SATMAP info, but I can post on a GPX file which I received fomr Alun, who is also on this thread, with his permission of course.

jusmeig

Hi there,

I think a GPX file will work, its all just GPS points.
If you would not mind I would like that very much!

Thanks

J

Alun

burly wrote: »

Dont have any SATMAP info, but I can post on a GPX file which I received fomr Alun, who is also on this thread, with his permission of course.

Bear in mind that that's a recorded track of an actual walk I was on, led by someone else who wasn't using a GPS, rather than a route (i.e. a set of waypoints) planned ahead for GPS use, so there are a few 'wiggles' where we made some small mistakes which you probably would not want to duplicate. The most obvious one is coming down from Ben Bury to the saddle before climbing up to the summit of Mweelrea itself where we got a little off course for a while but corrected ourselves .. should be obvious if you look at the track overlaid on a map.

I've attached it here as a ZIP file (boards won't let me attach a GPX file directly).

jusmeig

Alun wrote: »

Bear in mind that that's a recorded track of an actual walk I was on, led by someone else who wasn't using a GPS, rather than a route (i.e. a set of waypoints) planned ahead for GPS use, so there are a few 'wiggles' where we made some small mistakes which you probably would not want to duplicate. The most obvious one is coming down from Ben Bury to the saddle before climbing up to the summit of Mweelrea itself where we got a little off course for a while but corrected ourselves .. should be obvious if you look at the track overlaid on a map.

I've attached it here as a ZIP file (boards won't let me attach a GPX file directly).

Thanks man, ill fire it onto the satmap later and see if I can spot your little detours If anything it will be a good place to start planning. It's hard reading some of the route descriptions online to translate it to a map.

jusmeig

Alun - Looks like your guide was fairly good. Had a look at that route and apart form the wiggle you mentioned it looks good.

Thanks for sharing!

johngalway

wheres me jumpa wrote: »

Cheers Alun,

When you say GPS track.......do i need GPS for it?! If so, do not send!

My sister works in the Delphi lodge up there so we have a good starting point. She was saying there is/are well marked route(s) up Mweelrea. True?

I don't think I'd agree with your sister to be honest, but I've only been up the once. From Doo Lough, where the stream meets the lake we went over the footbridge and pretty much started gaining height until we got to the ridge.

It's wet bog and slippy and steep in places, so take your time. Navigation wasn't an issue as we had a crystal clear warm day. Headed to Ben Bury, then onto Mweelrea top.

There's a narrow path off the top heading towards Killary Harbour - we were going home by speed boat so it may not be applicable in your case I don't know. On your left will be a long rocky drop, on your right is a very very steep grassy bank. You don't want to fall either side It's narrow and single file, not a place for messing.

Our descent was fairly steep in spots, wet and the odd bit of heather, but no one took a tumble.

If you have a clear day like we did the the work is the ascent and descent, the ridge from once you gain height over Doo Lough to the top itself is easy peasy.

Don't take that advice for mist/fog though as I haven't been there in that stuff yet.

JackDaily

Hi, a group of 6 of us are looking o climb mweelrea in hte next few weeks. Looking for a reasonably priced guide and some accommodation....hostels will do us. Any suggestions here?

apoeiguq3094y

If you are affiliated with the university in galway (NUIG) the mountaineering club there climbs it every semester. Might be an idea to do some other hikes with them if you can to build up to it. Mweelrea is a long enough walk if you do the peak and the full horseshoe, so make sure you're fit enough.

If you're not in NUIG, you could try getting in touch with some of the other clubs based around Connemara or Westport, they might be able to point out someone. Never heard of anyone offering the service you speak of. I'd imagine it would be a nightmare with insurance to get paid to do that.

By the way, don't go up there without a map and a compass and at least 2 people who know how to use them.

duckysauce

JackDaily wrote: »

Hi, a group of 6 of us are looking o climb mweelrea in hte next few weeks. Looking for a reasonably priced guide and some accommodation....hostels will do us. Any suggestions here?

http://www.walkconnemara.com Paul should sort you out.

a148pro

I think most of the local adventure lodgey type places would also offer guides. I know my mother climbed it with a guide one time as one of her companions twisted her knee and had to be carried off the mountain (by people other than my mother:)).

DarrenJames

Hoping to do the walk following the route outlined by Alun in this thread. Does anyone know where there is parking available near the end point? The end point of this route is on the road near Bundorragha.

Alun

There's a bit of a layby on the road exactly where the route ends. You'd be able to leave a car or two there.

See http://goo.gl/maps/PR73f

Hugh_C

Hoping to climb Mweelrea this year, has anyone here experience of staying in the mountain lodge a bit south of the Delphi Lodge? It looks pretty swish from the outside

DarrenJames

Thanks so much Alun. Was very funny, I had Google maps street view open and was looking along the road and stopped in that exact point when I opened your link.