We were up bright and early at 8am on Saturday morning, had breakfast and started taking down the tents. We just had all our gear packed when it started to rain – heavy! The weather was wet and foggy as we started hiking, and the higher we went, the worse the weather got. We had to keep stopping to check our bearings and make sure we were going the right way. After what felt like days, we finally reached high camp. The wind was picking up fast and we had to be quick putting up our tents. It was even harder to put up the tents as all our fingers were so numb from the cold. Once we were inside our tents we took off our boots, which had a small lake of water inside them! We had some lunch which included soggy sandwiches for some of us!! We could hear the wind belting off the tent and we thought that we were going to take off into the air like a kite!!! The weather was getting worse by the minute so the leaders decided to cancel the rest of the day hike. We were a bit disappointed but delighted that we didn't have to put back on our wet gear and go back outside. Then we just had to decide on what we'd do for the next few hours! as we were stuck inside our tent!
After an hour or two, and it had stopped raining, we decided to be adventurous and go outside! We went for a walk around the lake, and then headed uphill to get some water from the small water-fall. But soon we had to try and navigate ourselves back to the tents, as it was getting dark. When we got back to the tents we were all looking forward to nice hot pasta but, there was only one small problem... we had no matches Chris's were wet and Grainne's were all used up by Eoin and Oisin at lunch time. Thanks for that lads. So we had to get back out of our tents and go look for matches! Luckily someone had flint and steel so we were able to use that. After dinner, we stayed in our tents talking and singing along to music. It was only 8pm when decided to settle down for the night, as there was nothing else to do and we had already talked for Ireland!!!
We woke early to the sound of someone saying that the Scouts Own was in 10 minutes. We quickly stumbled out of our tents and, unwillingly, put on our wet boots, to be told that we had another 30 minutes! So while Eoin and Oisin decided to get a head start and take down their tent... Grainne and I went back to sleep!
After we were presented with our last Sionnach badges we took down our tent and packed it into our bags and also gave the triange to the boys as planned! We had a look at the route that we would be taking on the way down. Just our luck – it started to rain as we started to leave. After crossing a stream, it was all uphill. It was like a never ending mountain. The higher we got the more of the mountain we could see. Finally when we got to the top, we couldn't find the check point anywhere. After taking some more bearings we figured out that we had gone a bit too high! Once we had navigated our way back to the correct check point we could just about see the car park. We were all relieved! At this stage the only thing that was keeping us going was the thought of KFC. For most of the way down hill that was all we talked about, what we were going to have in KFC!
Once we had finally arrived back down at where we camped the first night we were all delighted, but then thought of the very steep hill that we had to climb up to get to the car park. Oisin and Eoin sprinted on ahead to get to the car so they could change into their dry clothes first while Grainne and I took our time. Once we had changed out of our wet gear and were warm and dry, it was off to KFC (at last!). We were all delighted when we got there and ordered the biggest meals ever! Eoin and Oisin got Ben & Jerry's ice-cream for the trip home in the car, and were not into sharing it with anyone!
I might talk about the rain, wind, fog, cold, wet boots, soggy sambos, climbing for what seems like forever uphill and all of that, but don’t get me wrong, these weekend trips are big adventures. We can learn a lot of stuff in the hall but you have to get out on the mountains to really understand it. I would highly recommend the Sionnach Adventures as we also sang, laughed and made some new friends which we hope to see again in 2012.
We all had a brilliant weekend even though the weather wasn't the best. A big Thank You goes to Chris and the Sionnach leaders for organising the Comeragh Mountains Sionnach 2011.
Looking forward to Sionnach 2012.
