Beaumont Quarry
This information is provided by Robin Hogger.
Directions: From Douglas Shopping Centre head into Cork under the South Link road. Turn right at the traffic lights into Well Road. Straight across the first roundabout and up a steepish hill to another roundabout where you turn left. Past the Silver Quay pub and Cork Con. football pitch on your left until a big sweeping left in the road. The quarry is clearly visible on your right. There is a little road (marked cul-de-sac) which you can walk down through a small cluster of houses and onto a footpath which leads through to Beaumont Drive. Walk down the footpath and turn right at the obvious entrance to the quarry.
Description: It’s not a Dalkey but it’s the best I’ve found in Cork City. Wouldn’t be worth travelling for but could become a nice place for local climbers. There’s quite a lot of small quarried faces (say 5-8 m high) around the periphery of the quarry which would make good bouldering/micro routes and in the middle (where the caves are) there’s a big slab and pinnacle (25 meters) and a couple of subsidiary walls (say 10-12 m). It looks like crap now because of the undergrowth and vegetation on the faces, burnt scooters and piles and piles of Dutch Gold tins (the local kids come here to party and occasionally fall off the top).
I’ve climbed four lines there.
1/ The highest ivy covered pinnacle (about Mod!).
2/ The clean arête visible from the road (VDiff I think, about 23-25 meters), it had a homemade peg in the top which came out in my hand on lead!
3/ The cracked wall high up and to the left of the arête but right of the pinnacle (scramble to the ledge and then climb) probably HS quite nice moves but only about 5-6m of climbing. Another homemade peg (cut out of bit of galvanised iron!) but this one didn’t want to move
4/ Garda Patrol (Severe 12m - Robin Hogger, Ruth Hogger in Beaumont Quarry, Cork 02/May/2004.) Climb cleaned on abseil and toproped before led on gear. It's still quite dirty needs some good rain and wind (at least we have that today!) and a few climbers on it. Pleasant enough limestone slab climbing but you need to be careful with the pro. There is still a huge amount of choss on the top and a couple of the big flakes that you get gear behind sound pretty hollow!
Description: Start at the LHS of an obvious quarried 2m high vertical step, straight up past two small flakes to another quarried step. Move up on pockets and knobs tending slightly left to the LHS of a hollow (detached?) flake shaped like a shield. Climb (carefully) leftwards over 2 meters of choss to top out. Belay on the golf club fence and a small thorn bush. You may need a rigging rope if you haven’t got 60m single or doubles.
I’m sure I’ve seen route descriptions for 2/ and 3/ (maybe dreamed it!) if anyone has any info on those it would be great. I suspect other stuff has been climbed too but based on the amount of gardening required on the slab I don’t think that has ever seen any activity, there was certainly no sign of placements of any kind.
I’m beginning to clean some more lines but the quarry is very overgrown and it’s a long job. I think there will be some good (hard) short lines tucked away at the back but so far I’ve been working on the large slab as it’s easier to get to and offers (relatively) longer climbs. What it needs is a few climbers to come and work it.
