Cave Hill Winter Hike

After weeks at home it was time for some outdoors action so I gave Cave Hill a quick once around. The hill didn’t seem too snowbound driving up so I decided I would take the route across the face as opposed to the usually walked main path. The car park was busier than I would have expected considering the icy weather but at least all those walkers had potentially eased some of the ice; last Boxing Day we were forced to turn back because the paths were so slippery and treacherous that we didn’t want to risk a Christmas plastering involving A&E rather than too much red!
The track from the car park to the main cave was easily passable but still very icy and care was required. At that point I realised that the snow was worse than was apparent from the motorway but I still decided to take the more direct route – obviously I was missing the mountains more than I thought.

The walk up to the oddly named Napoleons Nose is always a steep trek which was made worse by the difficult conditions plus obscured paths, and now to add to the wintry wonder of it all the snow started to fall. As I climbed higher the wind filled in until the snow was really beginning to bite and the couples and dog walkers that had been wandering the paths gradually faded into the distance leaving me the only one on the front face.

Eventually I met the final path to the top and emerged by the gate making my way up the stone steps to the summit.

There was a family hanging round at the top with a handful of kids mostly complaining about having to be up there in that sort of weather so I snapped a few quick (terrible) photos and raced back down to get out of the wind.

From the summit across the flat top of Cave Hill is a wide reasonably flat path that leads to the Hightown Road which I followed until I came across a group of horses standing right across the cattle grid I needed to cross so walking pole in hand, I blustered by before they smelled the fear and ganged up against me! (Shoal, crowd, murder, flock – what is a gathering of horses?)

The route back down has paths much more roughly carved into the ground than on the ascent and the snow had frozen solid making parts of it impossible without either some toddler like bottom shuffling or an attempted uncontrolled ice slide, both of which can’t be performed if anyone’s watching.

Still, Cave Hill is glorious in any weather with some visibility and it’s always worth it for the view of Belfast from the top.