Mountaineering Club

The University of Galway Mountaineering Club is one of the oldest and the largest club in the University. Founded in 1970 it has more than 400 paid members every year. The club organises weekly hikes in Connemara and operates the climbing wall in the Kingfisher Gym on the University Campus. The club organises several trips every year typically one main trip a semester to somewhere in Ireland or to Wales. With additional trips being organised some years such as Winter trips to Scotland and smaller trips around Ireland.

The club also organises the Maamturks Challenge which is one of the most popular hillwalking events in the country. This is organised by a subcommittee which I have also been on and led several times.

Committee Roles

Captain

Me climbing Dorsal Arete in Scotland

2025-2026

The Captain is responsible for ensuring the whole club runs smoothly, leading the rest of the committee and as a liason with the sports unit. I learnt a lot about managing a team in this role and how to create an environment that is fun and welcoming for everyone to work together as a team. The Club grew a lot during my time as captain both in membership and the activities that we organised. We organised two international trips, one to wales and a winter trip to Scotland for the first time in more than 10 years.

Equipment Officer

2024-2025

The Equipment Officer inspects, maintains, replaces and procures all the club's equipment. This is especially important for climbing equipment which is critical to safety. As equipment officer I set up a new selfhosted database that allows equipment to be signed out to people with it automatically sending email notifications to the borrower. It allows the history of the equipment to be tracked such as when it was bought, who used it and when and the equipment's current condition.

I also acquired funding from the Sports Unit for €5k to be invested in the club's equipment to replace gear that was past its reccomended lifespan and buy new equipment to allow the club to organise more activities and increase safety.

Climbing Vice Captain

2023-2024

The Climbing VC is responsible for all climbing in the club. This primarily involves managing the climbing wall which includes

• Organising training of new members
• Training and assessing new climbing instructors
• Organising taking down the holds and setting new routes twice a year
• Maintenance of the Climbing wall

The other part of the job is organising outdoor climbing trips for the club which involves

• Organising training courses for members to upskill
• Planning outdoor climbing trips
• Responsible for safety and the organisation of outdoor climbing on trips

Secretary

2022-2023

In this role I was responsible for all email correspondence and moved our document storage to shared drives to ensure all committee members could access documents instead of storing them in personal drives.

I also took minutes for the weekly committee meeting as well as assisting other committee members with their responsibilities.

Other volunteering in the club

Hike Leader

As a hike leader I regularly led a group of other people on the weekly club hikes. The hikes can be in very challenging terrain and weather and we have to be able to navigate, manage the group and make sure everyone is still having a good time. I am currently working towards my Mountain Leader Award which is the official qualification to guide hiking professionally in the UK and Ireland.

Climbing Instructor

As a Climbing Instructor I taught lessons or did assessments multiple evenings every week teaching the basic skills of climbing as well as more advanced lessons. I have my Rock Climbing Instructor award which is the professional quailification to guide indoor or outdoor rock climbing in the UK and Ireland.

Webmaster

As an additional voluntary role I have been part of the team responsible for maintaining and developing the clubs digital presence. We have a number of websites/web services that are all self hosted:

• Club main website
• Webstore where we sell tickets to events
• Club Wiki similar to this
• Club email system
• Database of climbing assessments
• Equipment database as previously mentioned