Tag Archives: exploration

Jan22

A trip into legend – The Cave of the Cats in Rathcrogan, and the origin of Samhain (Halloween)

Posted on January 22, 2025 by perfectusvarrus

Thursday, 24-October-2024

It’s pronounced “Sell-Win”, by the way. Not “Sam-Hay-ne”.

I learned that pretty quickly, as we drove out into the Irish countryside, on our mission to find the roots of Halloween, buried beneath the earth of the Emerald Isle. I was on the road with my friends Brian and Megan, heading West toward the midlands of Ireland, enjoying the quiet and good conversation as the highway passed beneath the wheels of our rental car.

Megan had invited us out to explore the Cave of the Cats, or Oweynagat Cave in its native Irish, in the town of Rathcrogan. She’d first heard about it years back, when she was first getting interested in Ireland, as the origin of Halloween – according to myth, this cave was where the spirits of the otherworld would enter ours one evening per year. That evening, people would stay indoors, or dress up to avoid being taken captive and dragged back underground to the otherworld… an evening that evolved over time into what we call Halloween.

It was an excellent adventure – I can’t say that we passed into the otherworld, or that we did battle with any ancient spirits… but we did get an excellent tour of the land, heard stories about its history, and even had the chance to step foot into the cave itself. We didn’t go particularly deep, of course, as who knows how long it could have taken us to get out…

On the way out, we stopped in for lunch, and a bit of exploration, in a town called Roscommon. We grabbed a bite to eat, explored Roscommon castle, and I even flew the drone around a bit!

Nothing of major note, but definitely one of the fun parts of Ireland – being able to stop into small towns, tour a castle, and then get back on the road. Good times!

Rathcrogan itself found us stopped at the visitor’s center, meeting our tour guide, and then descending into history and myth of Samhain. Our guide was absolutely amazing – as the guy who literally wrote the book on the area (we definitively got copies), he regaled us with myth and story from all across Ireland, focused on those tied in with the cave that we were exploring. We listened, absorbed, learned, and let ourselves be transported back in time… to the days of Celtic heroes and monsters.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathcroghan#Oweynagat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathcroghan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

Oct31

Exploring & scouting the Ledges

Posted on October 31, 2013 by perfectusvarrus

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Sunday, 13-Oct-2013

Sunday was a bit of a gross day… Not fully rain, but neither Daniel nor myself wanted to aim for any large ascents, for fear of the sky opening up on top of us.

So instead, we grabbed our gear from the cars and walked up to the Ledges out behind the Loj, to set up at the old rappel point. It hadn’t seen use in years, but we knew that a single 70m rope would get down to the bottom… so we set it up and started our exploration.

You see, the idea of cleaning up the ledges and turning them into a full climbing area has long been a goal of Daniel and myself. Some other NUHOCers have talked about it, but no one ever really makes a move to do it… Today was going to be our recon day. See if there was enough interesting rock to make a go of it. See if the area was even worth the effort to clean up.

As we lowered ourselves off the cliff face, and down onto the side, we had our answer.

The rock was disgusting, covered in dirt and lichen and small growth.

But underneath that… just below the surface… the granite was solid. Rough, but with clean cracks running through it. Cracks just big enough to get fingers and hands into. It’s a perfect cliff, just waiting for someone to clean it off and set up a few good routes.

So we kept exploring – checking out the boulder field below the cliff, and even trying out a few routes. None of the climbing was too exciting or solid, though we did finish out a few smaller lines that we’ll probably clean up over the winter. From there, we kept exploring… doing a bit of photography, and tried to find a solid trail that would take us back to the top of the ledges.

As we walked, we started working up names for the cliff faces, and even came up with a few route names as well… all names that will remain secret until we actually start setting the routes, however.

Nov22

Pictures from San Francisco – Graffiti edition

Posted on November 22, 2011 by perfectusvarrus

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A friend of mine’s traveling around the world right now, a bit like me except she’s actually successful at not getting kicked out of South America, heh. One of the focuses of her travels is photography (She’s got an amazing ability to get shots I’d never even think of), and she takes a lot of really neat pictures of graffiti and other urban artwork… so to take a page out of her book, here are a few of the best pieces of “urban artwork” that I saw in San Francisco!