Hiking to Infinity

Like I told you last week we were going on the Gaisce Hike, well it was not what people were expecting. We left school on the bus and went up to Kippure. We split up into our houses, got our hiking on and then left for the 5 hour hike!!

Kippure Estate 

We started off and it was okay, nice steady pace and not too steep or anything. We just followed the road for a while and then walked through trees and on the road again. We stopped for some food before heading up a steep mountain, not fun!! The mountain was really high up and the walk was really long. After loads of going up steep rocky "paths" we finally reached the top of the mountain. On the top we had more food and there was also an ancient tomb. Some of us went inside the tomb. We went in one way and then there was an opening at the other end where we went out again. Anyway we continued walking up another mountain. This mountain had loads of false horizons so it seemed to be really high. Once we reached the top there it was all downhill from there so that was good. The only bad thing about downhill was that there were a few streams and boggy parts so people's feet got wet. It wasn't very nice but after all the boggy bit we followed a river along it's bank and then we made it back to Kippure and back to the houses. We all scrubbed up and had dinner before going to bed.

We had a very early rise Saturday morning, well very early for a Saturday morning. We all had breakfast and tidied up before leaving for activities at 9. We did high ropes activities like the leap of faith, a balance beam, a climbing wall, abseiling and a vertical challenge. We had the activities for about 2 hours before heading off again on the hike. During the activities it started raining which was a very bad thing!! It didn't last too long though. After the activities we got our hiking gear back on to head off for the other 10km. We split into 3 groups this time for the hike. A slower group went first, they got dropped off somewhere and then the bus came back for the rest. I went in the middle group, while on the bus getting dropped to a point it started to rain again but when we got off the bus we realized that it wasn't rain it was in fact snow!! It snowed for the whole 4 hours while hiking, it was horrible. And the mountain wasn't any better than the day before, it was quite steep too. When we got to the top though we had caught up with the first group. The instructors took out shelters which everyone huddled together to get under and eat. None of us really wanted to get out of the shelters but we had to so it was back out into the horrible wind and snow. The walk was also horrible, all the way along there were loads of bogs and huge puddles so everyone got soaked. Everyone was so happy when we got back to the house, dry, warm clothes and hot food. We got changed and some people had hot food and then we hit the road home. Typical when we got home it was lovely and sunny, but snow up the mountains. 

The Climbing Wall

Looking down from the Leap of Faith 

All in all it was a great weekend, pitty the weather wasn't good, even after all the sunny days we had before. I still had fun though.