To get to the top of Galtymore I highly recommend following the proper trail if you park at the Galtymore North car park. The start of the trail is about half a mile up the road leading to Coolmain, marked by a "No Dogs" sign and some concrete steps on your left. I followed the road all the way to the end instead and went through the only gate without a "Keep Out" sign on it (I'd met a sheep farmer on the way up and asked if I could go that way).

With Cush mountain far off to my left I could see Galty Beg and Galtymore in front of me, a large mound between them and a possible route up both. That mound is almost a mountain in its own right, at over 600m, and is the moraine for Lough Diheen. The best thing about being so far off the beaten track was getting to the top of the moraine and walking down the other side to see Lough Diheen up close. The echo off the cliff faces and around the bowl was impressive, with a couple of crows flying high up sounding unlike their usual coarse selves as their caws reverberated all around.

I stood there looking up at Galty Beg on my left and Galtymore on my right and trying to judge which would be an easier ascent but there wasn’t much to distinguish them, so seeing as I was there to climb Galtymore I headed straight up the north face, keeping Lough Diheen and the cliffs as far to my left as I could. This is probably my second mistake as it was steeper than I had imagined. My first mistake had been starting my climb at two in the afternoon in the middle of September.

As I approached the summit of Galtymore the clouds, that had been hovering over the summit the whole time, finally came down and unfortunately for me they didn’t lift again. Visibility had been getting worse long before I reached the summit and this was my third mistake; I should have headed back down instead of attempting to reach the top in such poor conditions.

Having not followed the trail to the summit and with visibility down to less than 25m the accumulation of mistakes made it impossible to know how to get back down. I knew roughly in which direction Galty Beg lay and that my best chance of descent would be to pick up the trail and follow it back down rather than the route I had taken up. I couldn’t see where the path I had taken up even began and knowing there to be a certain death drop nearby I wasn’t even going to try. So I headed off in what I thought was the direction of Galty Beg, ever mindful of the cliffs to my left that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even see an outline of Galty Beg but I tried to follow the footprints as best I could.

Unfortunately those footprints soon disappeared and I was now lost in the fog with no landmarks that I could make out in any direction, not even Galtymore. I was so lost I ended up walking in a large circle and back to the summit of Galtymore!

It had taken me two and a half hours to reach the summit the first time but it was now gone 5 o’clock and I had maybe three hours at most to get down. The descent is usually a lot faster than the ascent, but when you have no trail and no real idea which way to go it is just as slow going. The battery on the phone was getting low as well now but I used it to try to get a bearing for Galty Beg again. but I soon realised I was heading in the wrong direction again as I began to recognise some of the terrain I’d previously passed. By this point my phone had died so I figured the best thing to do was try and find a way down because it would be better to get off the mountain and then find my way back to the car rather than trying to find the correct route. At this point it was probably for the best that I didn’t know where the correct route was because I wouldn’t have made it anyway.

So I started heading gently down in a spiral from where I was, watching the limits of visibility for dangers. Visibility did actually improve for a little while but only to about a hundred metres and I did begin to think for a short while that just maybe I had found the path I had taken up the mountain. I soon realised I was wrong but at least I could see a path going down and I took it. The reason I realised I was wrong is because as I neared the bottom and visibility returned almost to normal I could tell which direction the Sun was setting (I couldn’t tell until then) and I knew then that I had just come down the South face of Galtymore.

I was down at least but things didn’t improve. It was starting to get dark, my phone had long since died and I didn’t know the area at all. I couldn’t even name a single village in the area and had no mental map of the roads. I hadn’t even found a road yet. Then I stumbled upon an actual path and with my recent knowledge of which direction I had been heading I followed it in what I thought was to the east.

The path started to twist and turn and I started to lose my sense of direction (that I’d mostly lost anyway really). It then came to a junction and I made a guess to follow it to the left because I figured that would be heading possibly northwards, which is really where I wanted to be going. I also thought that just maybe it would take me through a pass to the north side of the Galtee mountain range.

The path started to climb and by now the Sun had long set. I had no idea of the time and all I had left was hope that I would get to somewhere familiar. As I climbed the fog began to clear, but any thoughts of my luck turning soon dissipated when I realised I could make out the shadow of Galtymore to my left and Galty Beg in front of me. Then the path forked. I followed the path to the right but it soon disappeared, so I went back to the fork and took the other path but that ended even quicker.

The clouds had now descended again but although the Sun had set and it was a hundred percent cloud cover I found I could still see despite there being no moonlight. I figured it was light from what looked like a town behind me reflecting off the clouds. Whatever the reason for being able to see I decided to return to the first path I had taken and see how far I could get.

I traversed some large gullies cut into the bog, being able to vaguely make out Galty Beg and keeping it to my left. Visibility was back down to 25m and I quickly found that on the limit the ground was dropping off quickly. It was at this point I decided to stop trying to get down and just wait until the clouds lifted or daylight came. I found a depression in the bog to keep the wind, that had been getting stronger, off myself and lay down to wait. I’d put on every layer of clothing I had but as the night drew on it did get colder and I let the shivering do its job to keep my core temperature up. A few times I got up and moved to another hollow in order to build up some warmth by movement or as the wind changed direction. It was a long night.

I didn’t even bother to check the time using my camera, I figured it wouldn’t help knowing roughly how long it would be till daylight. When I did notice it starting to get lighter I tried to make out which direction the Sun was coming up from so I could get some idea if I had guessed right earlier and that I was heading north. The clouds had a few times in the night lifted just long enough for me to see a couple of landmarks lower down now they had set themselves to the ground and weren’t budging. I started to doubt that I was actually on the east side of Galty Beg and that I might even be on Galtymore for the third time.

I needed to see a landmark, a proper usable landmark, so as it got brighter I headed up the mountain I was on. As I got to the summit I was glad to see it wasn’t Galtymore and my confidence returned that I was on Galty Beg. I couldn’t make out a single landmark though. I did find footprints and a trail, so I followed where it was heaviest. After a short while something didn’t seem right and I used every meagre bit of knowledge of what I had seen on my ascent to work out which way to go. I guessed, rightly it eventually turned out, that the footprints I was following were heading towards Galtymore. This was the start of some good guesswork.

I went back to near the summit of Galty Beg and picked up another trail going in the direction I thought I should be heading. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before I’d lost the trail and was following animal tracks. I’d seen a few dozen people walking up and down the mountain the day before and I would have thought there would be some kind of trail as it seems to be a popular mountain, but I had lost it entirely. So I guessed I should start heading to the left and eventually decided to just turn almost completely left and that’s how I picked up the trail again.

As I neared the path to descend the mountain the tracks became intermixed with animal tracks and then started to go in two different directions. One started leading straight down the mountain, a steep and slippery route, the other continued in the direction I had been going. The path down looked too slippery so I carried on and a gap opened in the rocks on my left and I could see the trail about 20 metres below where I was. I couldn’t make out how to get to it but I figured I could make it down the slope to the narrow path that wound down the side of the mountain and I was finally on my way home.

At this point I still wasn’t entirely sure I was going in the right direction, all I had to go on was the path seemed to be fairly well trodden and I had seen what I thought was Cush Mountain a bit earlier in roughly the direction I was heading. I couldn’t see it anymore but by now all I could do was trust my guesses. I lost the trail several times, twice going off in completely the wrong direction and doubling back on myself once, but step after step I slowly descended. Cush mountain is a very interesting mountain approaching it from the south if you hadn’t already walked over it from the north and a lot higher than I realised. After all the climbing I had done I didn’t even stop when I reached the summit, I just wanted to get back to the car.

Visibility was still poor, I couldn’t even see an outline of any of the mountains around me and didn’t see Galtymore again before I left. The path was also a lot longer than I had thought, with a hidden turnstile at one point that worried me before I saw it because the path appeared to be following the line of the fence and the fence had turned back the way I had come.

It wasn’t long after the turnstile that I saw the telegraph poles marking the road that I still couldn’t see but at least I knew I was back in civilisation. I didn’t know if it was the road I had started on and with the clouds hiding every major landmark I had only hope that I had at least come upon a road on the right side of the mountain range so that I could find my car. As I crossed over the final turnstile and down the steps that I did not remember seeing the day before I turned right to follow the road away from the mountains and that’s when I saw my car just fifty metres away. It had been twenty-three and a half hours since I had started my journey.