Croagh Patrick

We decided to climb Croagh Patrick on Friday, five days ago. Croagh Patrick, one of Ireland’s highest mountains, can be translated to “Patrick’s stack”, and is the site of an important pilgrimage on Garland Sunday, on which day thousands of people climb the 2,507 feet to the peak and place where Saint Patrick spent forty days fasting. We started our climb with a slight but long assent up to the saddle of the mountain. The trail is famously tough walking and poorly maintained. The rock and gravel that made up the entire trail was either slick, or unable to support a step, thus footing is commonly unstable, and even more so on the way down. But despite the walking conditions, the view of Clew Bay as we went up the mountain is wonderful, and there is a small creek there too. 

Once we reached the saddle of the mountain, we found the first cairn. These large rock mounds are thought to be bronze age burial cairns and are known together as "Mary's graveyard”. The walk along the saddle of the mountain was the easiest part of the hike, with almost no slope, and plenty of places to stop. We found two of the aforementioned cairns along this leg of the walk, one at the beginning and one at the end. Also at the end was the first look of the daunting puff, or steep hill, ahead, to the peak of Croagh Patrick.

The steep hike to the peak of the mountain began with a manageable slope heading up the first third of the puff. Along this part, footing was not very stable, however there was a strip on the right side of the path that is worn bare, providing much better footing. As we near the end of the section, we found a set of stairs on the far left. The stairs offered the best footing of the entire hike. The stairs went up the next third of the slope, and were not yet finished. The stairs lead to the hardest part of the entire hike. At the end of the stairs was a daunting section of gravely mountainside, on which we found people carefully picking their way up. This was the place where it was steepest, where the footing was the most treacherous, and where my mom gave up. About half way up the slippery slope, she pronounced, “I am not going to do it, because I don’t want to come back down this!” And she sat down and refused to go any further. Continuing on, the grade remained steep, but was nowhere near as bad.

Upon reaching the top of Croagh Patrick, there were three things of note. The first of which was the church, second was the Saint Patrick’s bed, and lastly there was the cairn sitting behind it. There has been a church standing at the peak of Croagh Patrick since the fifth century, and the current church on the peak was finished on July 20th, 1905. The cairn has been added to over the years, similar to the bed. The bed was where Saint Patrick slept during his forty day fasting at the peak of Croagh Patrick.

After seeing these three things, we looked out at the view from the top of the mountain. On the day that we hiked, it looked a little like this: