The Maamturks Challenge is one of Ireland's most popular hillwalking events. In its 42nd year, the
Challenge is still considered to be one of the enduring events in the Irish hillwalking calendar.
Participants must complete a full traverse of the iconic Maamturks mountain range, a total of 25km
walking with 2300m of ascent and a typical time of 10-12 hour completion time.
Each year the event is organised solely by the NUI Galway Mountaineering Club on a non-profit
basis. A group of students volunteer their time to organise the event, completely for the benefit of the
public and local community. This makes the event exceptionally unique.
Each year, tickets to the event are capped at 200 participants. This is for safety reasons and to
prevent excess erosion on the route. The challenge is almost always booked out completely within a
few days or hours of the tickets being released.
This year, we received an amazing, and completely unexpected response to the ticket sales. All 200
tickets were sold out in less than three minutes. Ticket sales opened at 19.00 and closed again at
19.03. Our volunteer committee had no way of expecting such an influx of people within such a
short space of time. As one participant noted, it took U2 a "whole six minutes" to sell out on the
same day. This response is a testimony to the popularity of the event. It is Ireland's only hillwalking
challenge that is run entirely by student volunteers, completely for the benefit of the public.
As always, we would like to thank our participants for supporting the event, we offer our deepest
apologies to those not offered a place. A waiting list is now in place for those interested.
In some other exciting news, The Maamturks Challenge has been nominated for the Outsider
Magazine “Best Outdoor/Adventure Event 2016â€. We’re thrilled to have been nominated for the
award for all the hard work that our committee and volunteers put into delivering the event every
year. The final decision is now down to public vote and you can help us to win the award by voting
here for the Maamturks Challenge on the Outsider website: outsider.ie/Outsider-AwardsVoting/best-outdoor-event
More details of the event and contact details for the organising committee can be found on our
website www.nuigmc.com/maamturks.