You’re always going to have problems, sometimes the problems are big or small, they can be deep problems or superficial ones, they can be personal problems or grand, existential ones which have no clear answers but the hard truth is that they’re always going to be there. When you’re climbing a mountain your problems don’t go away but they do look very different. I learned this about five minutes into my journey up Croagh Patrick when I realized that I was already in way over my head and had a long way to go.
The pilgrimage began at a quarter to four in the morning as myself and Basil ate breakfast and contemplated the day ahead of us, we had a box of sandwiches and biscuits prepared along with two flasks of hot water which would be miraculously transformed into mugs of tea once we made it back down from the peak. Sitting in that warm kitchen, munching on a bowl of corn flakes it didn’t seem like all that imposing of a prospect, Basil had done the trek around forty times and every member of his family had done it along with him an odd time or another, all told about 20,000 people climb the peak annually on the last Sunday of July so how hard could it be? I’d been implored numerous times since coming to Ireland that I had to climb ‘The Reek’ as the hill is informally known and these people certainly wouldn’t try to put me in harm’s way unnecessarily, right?
We set off before dawn in a spattering of summer rain, never mind that it’s the dry season in Ireland there’s still going to be rain and of course it had to fall on the one day we were planning to climb a mountain, the day before was reasonably clear and the day after has been blissfully sunny but someone up there has a great sense of humor so we began belting down the tarmac as rain pelted against the windshield. We’re leaving so early because Basil wants to be at the summit for first mass, starting at 8 am every year a series of catholic observances run all day in the chapel atop of Croagh Patrick, the eponymous saint made the ascent himself and fasted for 40 days upon it helping to solidify his position as the island’s patron holy man. While St. Patrick’s day is known internationally as the most Irish holiday, Reek Sunday is the day which the more devoted inhabitants of the island pay their respects and say prayers at the feet of his statues all over the country, furthermore, all those who make their way up Ireland’s holiest mountain are believed to have completed their penance for the year and are duly forgiven for the past year’s transgressions.
For my part I’m just in it for the craic. Not being a catholic I’m not looking to absolve myself of any wrongdoing or make good in the eyes of a merciful God, but I am an amateur avid outdoorsman so the opportunity to haul my bones up a pile of rocks to a wonderful view of the surrounding landscape is all of the motivation I need to get this done. Just one year prior I took a stroll up past Lake Annascaul while down in the Dingle peninsula, the weather that day was generously suboptimal as well but the reward of amazing overlooks and peaceful mental state was more than worth the effort, so I was expecting much the same from this hike, a long road and a wet one, but all the same not one outside of my comfort zone. The day before Basil produced two branches from a recently cut down Ash tree which we trimmed to serve as walking sticks, he says that walking sticks are an absolute necessity and many enterprising individuals will be selling lengths of wood to unprepared pilgrims at a modest markup of three to five euro a pop.
After a little over an hour of riding in the ‘jeep’ we pull up to the mountain itself true to Basil’s word the road is lined with men in vans offering sticks for The Reek on hand drawn signs, just past daybreak we pull into a local farmer’s field transformed into a parking lot with a five euro entry fee. I strap on my boots before loading up with a bottle of lucozade and a pack of biscuits for energy, grabbing our sticks we set out under a ceiling of drab grey clouds lightly drizzling down on the whole affair. The mountain doesn’t look so bad from the bottom, then again the sky is closed in as a thick mist of cloud cover shrouds everything but the first rise of the hill, there’s a paved path, a gift shop, a flight of broad, shallow steps that finish up at a statue of the man himself St. Patrick. Basil starts walking circles around the idol, and I gaze out across Clew bay, a stretch of the Atlantic ocean which reaches inland and holds in its waters a series of small islands all with sheer, low faces on their western sides trailing down towards the waterline. It’ll be a fine view from the top if the weather clears up, Basil says once he’s finished his circuits, that’s a big ‘if’ I think as things get well underway.
The first stretch is the hardest, they say, and this is where I hit my first wall, barely 100 yards up the hill and I’m already flagging, my body is betraying me as I’ve let it go soft over the past few months, too many big dinners, too many beers, not enough time spent jogging or chopping wood. All of that is taking its toll as I’m using muscles I’ve let go to seed without realizing it, hamstrings and calf muscles are complaining and my lungs try to figure out just what the big idea is. To cope with the burning in my chest my body puts into practice all sorts of measures in the hopes of settling out the breakfast churning in my guts and the unstable build up of lactic acid which there isn’t enough oxygen to pull out of my muscles. I start yawning and burping, spitting out the contents of my sinuses as the fresh mountain air needs new avenues to get into my system, this trail isn’t want I expected as water washes past my boots while they crunch through the fist sized rocks which make up the path. Up ahead I can see how the mountain curls around a ridge and ascends higher and higher up into the unknown space within the clouds, whatever is up there is going to be harder than this if only for the fact that it will have come after I’ve already taken a beating. My big problem is that I underestimated this, my small problem is that my systems aren’t properly calibrated for the exertion, I’ve just got to find a balance of bodily functions which work for me and I’ll be alright I just keep moving.
We’re not alone on this hill and the people we pass and see pass us up are a strong motivator, I’m not yet thirty and Basil’s just over sixty but we’re joined by children too young to drive and those who grew up before the country had electricity. I’m not exactly struggling my way up the hill but it’s a hard fight, everyone else seems to be managing alright even once the rain begins to fall more earnestly, chalk it up to experience and heritage, I’ve heard that Italians climbs mountains wrong as they do more wrestling than dancing and if this is true then I’m going much to form while all the Irish around me keep pressing forward as though their feet are lighter than my own. Perhaps this is literally true as my boots are unwieldy and rub painfully on my feet, I’d been looking for proper hiking togs but again and again got turned away in shops that didn’t carry clod hoppers in my size. What I end up with are my Civil Defense issue steel-toes which refuse to give and flex as I pick my way through the rubble of glacial movements from millennia gone by, I can already feel the blisters forming on the backs of my heels and by the time they come off one the size of a Kennedy half dollar will have formed and broken.
The sticks we brought were for more than just show, every step uphill is aided by a healthy push off of the support and when we finally stop to rest we use them as a brace for our weary and whining bodies, Basil asks what hurts the most and after a moment of consideration I answer ‘my head’. The truth is that I’m already starting to get a little altitude sick and we’re not even up to the halfway point, my head feels heavy and light all at once, I want to vomit and sleep but then again that’s not unusual for being awake and active at six in the morning. As we take a breather I reluctantly take up my bottle of lucozade, to the uninitiated this is the Irish equivalent of Gator-ade, it’s a staple of hard partiers on long nights out as it’s absolutely loaded with sugar to keep your energy up. Typically I loath the stuff as it’s thick and sucrose laden, to me it’s as if someone added maple syrup to orange soda and then claimed it had healthy benefits and it utterly fails to quench a thirst that begs for cold water or at the most some lemonade. Resentfully I figure I’ll rinse my mouth out with a swig and spit off the side of the hill just to clear the taste of exertion and instant coffee off my tongue, but once I’ve got a mouthful of the tingly yellow liquid I begin absorbing the concoction through my gums and a light goes on in my brain. “We can use this!” it exclaims as the short term energy gives some life back to my tired limbs.
Further up the hill the weather turns for the worse and the rain starts flying sideways across the path, there are the ubiquitous sheep which have free roam of the mountain and much to my surprise there are exactly zero safety measures in place to stop people from falling off the edge of the cliffs. A bigger concern to me is the possibly of a rockslide, most of what we’re walking on is loose gravel that could easily give way and cause a climber to become a faller really fast. Mixed in amongst the more manageable stones are jagged rocks about the size of bowling balls, if one of those breaks loose and gets some speed behind it there’s nothing to say it couldn’t snap a leg bone or take an odd hop and crack open a skull. The prospect of a mini-avalanche doesn’t seem to bother anyone as I start to see people who have brought their dogs with them, will wonders never cease? Around what I assume is the halfway point we pass a small stone and tarp structure where a few men are taking refuge from the winds selling snacks and sodas, we’re well equipped and press on, Basil tells me it’s going to get easy for a while as the inclines level off and we can practically stroll down the trail for a good stretch, more stone structures sit on either side of the hill some of which have fallen to the passage of time while others stand as restrooms for the more adventurous hikers.
Speaking of which we run into a group of mountain rescue volunteers who are stopping everyone heading up for a quick word. They’re telling us that up ahead the winds are quite severe, it’s dangerous to keep going and mass has been canceled, they’re not saying we can’t go up but they’re strongly advising against it. We nod and move along, in fact, no one seems to be letting the warning stop them from making it up to the summit, the young and the old alike are pressing on having acknowledged the dangers as they’ve already accepted that the walk was going to be unpleasant and the degree to which they’d be uncomfortable was irrelevant. Big problem, this is going to suck. Small problem, you might die. The solution of course is just to keep pressing on, we’re approaching the last leg of the journey and despite what I was told earlier it’s going to be the hairiest section of the entire climb.
Combine every rough bit of the climb thus far and compact it into 400 yards of pain, if the trek was any more vertical it would require serious mountaineering gear, if the wind was any more vicious you’d have to go it at a crawl, if the terrain was any more treacherous it would have simply been undoable. All of this is compounded by the encroaching fog which isolates you in the 25 yard sphere around your present location depriving you of the opportunity to look back on how far you’ve come but also to look ahead in anticipation at what you’re going to go up against next. Of course you should be keeping your head down as a misstep could absolutely sprain your ankle or endanger those around you, you have to pick your line well because at this stage lateral movement becomes the enemy. Not that there’s any ‘easy’ way up and any route you pick is only a tradeoff between the worst of each world, I adopt a two-handed stick method which essentially consists of stretching my twisted bit of Ash three feet uphill and dragging my body behind it until I have a stable point of balance from which I can stab out my stick once more. We’re still not alone as people keep coming up and going back down having reached the top, if they can do it, so can we and there could be nothing worse than giving up now.
There is finally a crest to the insanity and we’re there, the peak of the mountain and I must say it’s not what I expected. They told me there’s a church up here but it’s nowhere to be seen, there’s a sign that I can’t read due to mist and something about the size of a coffee table which has been sectioned off by rails with a stone plaque at the far end. For all of the people who have been making their way up the mountain over the past few hours I can’t see them, for that matter I can’t see anything and that’s probably the strangest aspect of the whole hike, around me there’s nothing but the impermeable clouds which encroach in around you in every direction. There is an edge to the place where the rocks and dirt fall away but beyond that there is the oppressive white space which robs you of your depth perception and sense of place, it is staring into a gentle abyss just as awe inspiring as the deep ocean or outer space but somehow comforting and reassuring, the emptiness given form. After a bit of purposeful wandering the church appears, not all at once, first come the edges of the thing, the roofline peeks out and then those long black shapes come into focus as windows, the doors are two black holes and stairs which lead up to the place reveal small clusters of people huddled together in conversation. The building itself is painted white but it’s a different white to the clouds so there a soft glow coming off the bricks and it’s altogether ghostly.
We make our way to the sheltered side of the church where a line of people are finding reprieve from the wind and reveling in their victory, that may be a stretch to say because the mood isn’t exactly joyous so much as it’s resolutely finished. Some people are making cell phone calls to tell friends and family that they’ve made it but it’s so matter of fact, ’Yes I’m at the top, yeah no, there’s no view, I’ll be home in a few hours,’ and more confirmations that there won’t be any mass that day. In fact, this is the first time in living memory that the ceremony has been called off at the top of the mountain and thusly there’s nothing worth waiting around for, but still we mill about and for the first time on the mountain Basil drinks some of his lucozade and eats one of his biscuits, this must be his version of St. Patrick’s fast which he can finally break. I discover that if you lean up against the building itself you’ll find what little warmth you have in your body being sapped away and so I lean on my stick and wait for the appropriate amount of time to pass before we can head back down again. When I get the word from Basil that we can head back we reverse our course and find a new way to experience the misery of the mountain.
First thing that happens, my hat flies off, I’m not even off of the flat summit of The Reek and it’s chosen to slap me right in the face for my troubles, I grumble as I go to retrieve it, thankful that it got wedged in a small depression of stones and didn’t go careening into the netherworld off the side of the earth. Instead of putting it back on and repeating this process over and over again during the descent I stick it in my pocket along with my wallet which was fortunately on the dry side of my pants on the way up but would get absolutely wrecked on the return trip. I place all of my hopes in my light waterproof hood yet unsurprisingly it fails absolutely to protect me from the onslaught of angry weather heading my way, the wind whips a bitter spray of cold rain directly into my eyes and for the first time in this whole exercise my body actually whimpers. The entire way up I was painfully aware that every step up the hill would be one step which I would have to take back down, but those downward steps are vastly different form the upwards ones, for one thing, those blisters forming on the backs of my heels are replaced with ones now forming on my big toes. The painful slog to make progress is replaced by an earnest effort to resist gravity and not let the head of speed take over, the bigger difficulty is managing to move against the mass of pilgrims working their way up along the same paths you just took, only now they’re an obstacle which has its gaze cast down on its own feet and can’t really do the correct calculations to clear your path.
That’s the true spectacle of the day, the human highway of the mountain which has only gotten more crowded continues on unabated even in the higher reaches of the hill. Not long into our descent I spy for the first time a barefoot pilgrim, there is a small contingent of climbers who opt to make the journey shoeless for reasons I can’t understand, there is no amount of sinning one can do in a year to justify a penance so severe. The man I see is absolutely miserable as he leans heavily on his stick, his face is on his bruised and bloodied feet which I hope for his sake are numb from cold, his entire body is wracked with exhaustion but on he presses undeterred by mortal toils. I think that’s rather the point of the whole exercise, as we all have our problems in life which we must deal with and for the most part they consume our days and nights but for a few hours, on one day of the year you can forget your little problems if only to replace them with the big problem of getting up an absolute monster of a hill. We stop and chat to people on their way up, Basil’s stick seems to be the talk of the walk as it resembles a shepherd’s hook and he’s painted the tips of it red. We run into people we know and make polite conversation, I have to laugh when we ask how it’s going and people respond with ‘not so bad’, that’s truly the Irish spirit, nearly 2000 ft. up in the air being rained on and utterly out of breath they’ll still say it’s not so bad.
