A 32-year-old mountaineer from West Clare who recently completed a gruelling climb of Mont Blanc in the Alps has cautioned it is not a feat to be attempted without previous climbing experience. PJ Byrne from Kilkee summited Western Europe’s highest mountain, 4,500 metres, just weeks after he climbed Africa’s highest mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro, 5,900metres.
Climbing mountains was not always in the plan for the Clare man. Living in Bahrain, he generally keeps fit by playing Gaelic football with his local GAA club, the Arabian Celts and doing mixed martial arts (MMA) training.
He had not previously climbed mountains but always up for a challenge, when he heard his friend Nadeem Kunwar was planning to climb Mt Kilimanjaro followed by Mont Blanc, he decided to get a piece of the action too and jumped right in. Unaccustomed to climbing however, Mont Blanc would prove to be a technically challenging climb for PJ.
“Mont Blanc is more strenuous physically – it is a technical mountain to climb, and it is the equipment that separates Mont Blanc and Mt Kilimanjaro; on Mont Blanc you use ice hacks and crampons [traction device attached to footwear to improve mobility] to grab the snow,” he said.
“I went in quite ignorant and mostly blinded thinking Mont Blanc will be fine because it is a shorter climb of three days and not eight days like Kilimanjaro, but it was more intense over the three days.”
In preparation, he undertook an intensive crash course by climbing the lower mountains on the Alpine range and getting instruction in using the equipment needed to travel across steep glaciers in the snow.
Once training is complete, there is no guarantee a climber will be up to a climb either physically or mentally. And there are other risk factors that are outside climbers control like the weather and how the body will deal with the altitude. In fact, the success rate for climbing Mont Blanc is 60 to 70%.
“We had a guide with us and he said ‘I will be frank and it’s not your fault but these tour companies entice you in and say we will do Mont Blanc to get you ted. My advice is to get a couple of years experience first’,” he said
“Going into the climb blind may not have been a bad thing because I drove into it and was not put off. I was not put off to that scale. There is a lot of different groups who are attempting it; a lot of different ages, shapes, sizes and abilities. But a lot of locals are smarter than us because they slowly build up to it – I think they‘ve got the lay of the land as well,” he explained.
“The two mountains differ in that Mont Blanc is consistently very physically demanding and more of a struggle. Kilimanjaro is more enjoyable at times; it is not strenuous. I was looking for a challenge. Both have their own values.
“Mont Blanc is more of a struggle. The guide said quite sarcastically to us that we will be lucky [to ascend the mountain] because we have no experience.”
“Reaching the summit of Mont Blanc was a humbling experience. I didn’t know what to expect both physically, mentally and in terms of my own level of fitness and ability…It is an out-of-body experience for the last few hours, and I was in complete cruise control.”
There were a total of four climbers with his tour company who endeavoured the ascent and they were split up into two groups with one guide per group. Day one entailed a three-hour hike from Nid d’Aigle at 2,300m to Tête Rousse Glacier at 3,167metres. Day two was summit day with a 5am start from their hut to cross Grand Couloir ’ a steep corridor nicknamed ‘Corridor of Death’ which cannot be avoided on Mont Blanc.
“Crossing this 100m corridor involves a maddening game in which you must avoid being dragged down or killed by the rocks rolling down the slope, whilst carefully walking across a ledge 30cm wide, with a steep 500m drop on the other side,” he said.
“After the crossing, we climbed the Aiguille du Gouter, a steep rock face requiring scrambling and climbing, to reach the spaceship-like Gouter Hut. After a quick break, we climbed the Dome du Gouter, a 2-hour ascent to the Vallot Hut, our halfway mark.
“By this time the weather turned, winds picked up and visibility dropped. We continued up a steep slope to the final summit ridge; another two-hour climb with visibility down to three metres.
“Just before the ridge, two team members turned back due to altitude sickness. We continued for another 30 minutes to the summit (4,810m) which was a white-out.”
Living in Bahrain since 2018 where he works with Amazon Web Services, PJ is one of four quadruplets – Eva, Joe, and Hugh are the other three.
The quadruplets moved from Dublin with their parents and older brother, Ross when they were seven-years-old, and the family lived in Ennis for a year before moving to Kilkee.
His mother Bládhnaid still lives in Clare and his sister Eva lives in Limerick whilst the Byrne men all work in the US and Middle-East.
He jokes that the extent of his hiking experience in Kilkee was doing the Cliffs Walk, and the desert kingdom of Bahrain cannot be described as a mountainous terrain either.
He practised for Mont Blanc by repeatedly running up and down the stairs of his home and the private MMA training he has being doing over the past four years helped with cardio.
Although mountain climbing is a new-found interest for him, he plans to climb Ireland’s highest mountain, Carrauntohil when he returns to Ireland this month.
“I think I’ve got the bug. I love aspects of it; the challenge of it and anything that will put me through the test – I wouldn’t be pigeon-holed to it…Coming back from Mont Blanc, it made me appreciate Mother Nature and what she can do, and how things can change so fast up on the mountain,” he said.
Most importantly, PJ is keen to deliver a cautionary tale by reiterating what his tour guide drilled into him – that the mountain must be respected at all costs. He gives the example of the notorious Grand Couloir to illustrate how treacherous such a climb can be.
“It is a steep corridor and you have to cross it but it’s better to pass it early in the day before the ice starts to thaw and loose rocks start to get released. In that respect, the mountain is slowly eroding and certainly your life is in your hands,” he said.
“The three of us were tethered together and if one falls, you all go. You have to ensure there is no slack on the rope.”
But his biggest challenge was when they were descending the mountain, and they were forced to take an alternative route because of the weather and the risk of avalanche.
“After a 15-minute stop [at the summit], we started our descent. Bad weather further down and a high avalanche risk on our planned route, forced us to take a steeper path down,” he said.
“Twenty minutes in, winds picked up, leading to the scariest part of the trip. We had to cross a 70 degree ice sheet with a 2,000m drop.
“The slope was too steep and icy for crampons, so we turned around, dug in with our crampons and ice axes and shimmied down. It was absolutely terrifying.”
In pain and suffering severe blisters on both his heels, it was a very intense situation for the Kilkee man.
To further complicate the deadly scenario, a blizzard had enveloped them, and he had to go in a state of flow because any movement was potentially fatal.
Today, he is back in Bahrain where his body has started to heal. He reflects on the experience, and is thankful for the resilience he had built up thanks to his MMA training which benefited him helping him endure such an ordeal with little climbing experience.
However, he remembers that altitude sickness was not to be trifled with.
“I struggled a lot on Kilimanjaro on the summit but on Mont Blanc, I didn’t quite get to that level of discomfort,” he said.
“In a lower oxygen zone, you have no perspective because it is all white.
“A couple of people had altitude sickness and it’s no joke. I probably had some symptoms but I didn’t say it and said instead ‘let’s push through this’.
“You see lot of puke marks on the mountain and it’s scary. A lot of these different things can go wrong.
Again it’s the cautionary tale, and at the end of the day I hugely and vastly under-estimated the mountain.”
Sharon Dolan D’Arcy covers West Clare news. After completing a masters in journalism at University of Galway, Sharon worked as a court reporter at the Sligo Weekender. She was also editor of the Athenry News and Views.