Climbing
Fair Head is widely regarded as Ireland's finest climbing crag, but for a variety of reasons including its relatively remote location and the physical strength and unfamiliar climbing techniques often required there, does not attract the volume of climbers that one might expect at a crag of such quality. Its cliffs stretch for a distance of over 5 km around the headland, rising to a maximum height of over 100m. They are not sea-cliffs, but have been described as a mountain crag by the sea, since they tower above an extensive boulder field and their isolation and size gives climbing there a big-wall mountaineering feel.
The cliffs are composed of dolerite, giving a mixture of steep cracked walls, corners, and, in many places, sets of columns reminiscent of organ-pipes. The dolerite sits on top of a bed of chalk which is visible in places.
The cliffs abound in well-protected steep crack climbing, between one and four pitches long. Many of the cracks involve hand-jamming, so some climbers tape their hands to protect the skin from what they term "Fair Head rash". Other climbs involve off-width or full-width chimneying, which is not often encountered in other Irish crags. As with nearly all Irish crags, only traditional protection ("clean climbing") is used.
The current guidebook, published in 2002, lists about 400 routes from under grade VS 4c up to E6 6b, but more recent climbing includes routes up to E8 6c.
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Famous quotes containing the word climbing:
“Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
—Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)