Lucky escape for climber just weeks after Argentina triumph

Dunboyne mountaineer Keith McDonnell says he has no immediate plans to engage in another climb after he and Wicklowman Pat Doyle had to be dramatically rescued from near the top of Lugnaquilla in Co Wicklow last week. Mr McDonnell said the duo had made adequate plans for the trip up the 953 metre Wicklow mountain last week but they did make a mistake of not taking a second map and were caught out by a series of exceptional weather conditions. After 21 hours stranded on the mountain, the two men were saved from further exposure by a massive rescue mission involving services from both Northern Ireland, the Republic and Wales. Mr McDonnell said he is extremely grateful for all the efforts that were made to get him and Mr Doyle off Lugnaquilla. Ironically, he was left stranded on the highest peak in Leinster just a few weeks after he led an expedition to the top the Aconcagua mountain in Argentina, which, at 7,000 metres, is the highest peak outside the Himalayas. Four years ago Mr McDonnell packed in his job as an IT consultant to set up a company, Extreme Ireland, which organises walks and various outdoor pursuits. While preparations were made for the climb up Lugnaquilla with what Mr McDonnell felt was adequate equipment, he says mistakes were made and harsh lessons learned. The two men knew they were in difficulties after the wmap they brought with them was blown away. A fog quickly descended leaving just a few metres of visibility. 'A couple of things went wrong for us straight off. The fact that we only brought one map caused us problems. Taking two maps is the normal thing we normally do. We were due to conduct a walk the day before but we cancelled that because the conditions were bad. We wouldn"t normally bring a group up in those conditions. 'You would only get the conditions we came across once every 16 years when ice climbing is at its optimum, usually you have to go to Scotland or the Alps to get the conditions we had. Myself and Pat decided on Monday morning we"d head up and climb up what we call the South Prison. I had all my Alpine equipment but I didn"t have the spare map or the GPS you would bring if you had a group,' he recalled. Both climbers had climbed Lugnaquilla many times before but never experienced anything like the conditions they encountered this time around. While stranded on the mountain, they kept in regular contact with a paramedic team and were advised to dig in to protect themselves from the Arctic winds. After spending a freezing night on the mountain when the rescue services were unable to locate the climbers, Mr McDonnell started to feel concerned. 'There was never any time when we thought we were not going to be rescued, we were confident of that all the way through the night but the next morning the visibility was still so bad we still couldn"t see any more than five metres in front of us. The rescue team could literally be 20 metres one side of us and walk straight past. 'Pat lives at the bottom of Lugnaquilla and I have climbed it 40 times. The conditions were truly exceptional, I never saw them so bad. 'It was just a case of bad luck, the weather conditions were against us, any other circumstances we would have got down, no problem. The conditions were extremely rare. The normal features we would have used to micro navigate such as rocks were wiped out and covered up,' added Mr McDonnell who said that they could hear but not see the rescue helicopters overhead. When they eventually were rescued, both climbers were brought to Tallaght Hospital where the Dunboyne man was treated for frostbite on his toes and fingers.