Hillwalking in Ireland has seen a growth in popularity as an adventure and tourism activity over many decades. In recent years, more and more people have discovered the recreational opportunities available in the Irish upland areas. For many participants, hillwalking is all about exploring Ireland's great outdoors, improving / maintaining physical fitness and mental wellbeing, and meeting up with other like-minded people. More experienced hillwalkers embrace the various challenges on offer in the form of peakbagging and challenge walks, some of whom have long regarded hillwalking as a sport. However, unlike every other sport in Ireland, hillwalking lacked its own national or All-Ireland competition, the absence of which prevented it from being classed as a true sport.
Hillwalking's evolution from leisurely pastime to fully-fledged sport began in 2009 when Kieron Gribbon first came up with the idea of creating a national-level Irish hillwalking competition. At that time, while writing the book Ireland's County High Points - A Walking Guide, he recognised the potential for that list of locations to be at the centre of an interesting All-Ireland competition. Following the publication of his book in 2012, Kieron went on to develop the Irish Major Geographical High Points list by combining 8 separate geographically-themed High Point sublists. Published in December 2015, this All-Ireland list of 187 locations and 5 of its sublists now have the honour of being the first original Irish hillwalking lists to be published in the 21st century and the first since the Hewitts, Dillons and Marilyns in the 1990s. The Irish Major Geographical High Points list was published simultaneously in book format and on the newly-created High Point Ireland website.
A few months later, in 2016, Sport Hillwalking officially became a true sport through the introduction of the first-ever All-Ireland hillwalking sports competition: the All-Ireland Highpointeering Individuals League. This ground-breaking points-based competition was delivered by High Point Ireland and has been run as an evolving format every year since.
In 2017, we introduced the Clubs, Counties and Provinces Highpointeering Leagues. In 2020, we created the All-Ireland Mountain Race for experienced challenge hillwalkers wishing to introduce a time-based person-versus-person competitive element. In 2020, the Highpointeering Leagues and the Mountain Race ran in parallel as two separate competitions between the Spring Equinox and Autumn Equinox each year. At the end of the season, the combined results of these two competitions allowed us to identify the individual and team champions in the first-ever All-Ireland Hillwalking Championships: the ultimate achievement in Irish Sport Hillwalking.
In 2021, due to a lack of interest, we decided to permanently cancel the Mountain Race as a hillwalking initiative. When we first came up with the idea for a time-based hillwalking competition, we knew there was a strong possibility that it would be unsuccessful. The timed race format is probably more akin to the mountain running community, making it a difficult concept for hillwalkers to get behind. Nonetheless, testing the race format in 2020 was a worthwhile research exercise in finding out what competitive Sport Hillwalkers' goals are and how far they are willing to go to achieve those goals. It also gave us an opportunity to develop a full set of 24 anytime mountain challenges which we will continue to promote as hillwalking initiatives over on The Ireland Walking Guide website. A new single-track competitive format started on 1st March 2022 which featured our newly-expanded list of 355 Irish Sport Hillwalking locations.
For the 2022 competition season, we introduced a set of Specialist Awards for the top-performing individuals in each of Sport Hillwalking's three disciplines: Highpointeering, mountaineering and challenge hillwalking. In January 2023, we announced the introduction of separate Mens and Womens award categories in all of our individuals competitions and that this would include the already-ended 2022 Sport Hillwalking season.
Our All-Ireland Sports Competitions are the first-ever national hillwalking competitions to be hosted anywhere in the world. As such, they provide an evolving template for other countries to replicate. In time, if other countries choose to follow our example, we could even look at the possibility of setting up the first-ever Hillwalking World Championships.
Having established itself as the global founder of Sport Hillwalking in 2016, High Point Ireland became the All-Ireland governing body for the sport on 10th May 2021. As such, High Point Ireland now delivers all official hillwalking competitions at national level across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Other specialist matters related to the broader activity of hillwalking outside of Sport Hillwalking (the primary one being insurance provision) remain within the remit of Mountaineering Ireland and the Ulster Federation of Rambling Clubs.
We invited Mountaineering Ireland to get involved in our All-Ireland hillwalking competitions on numerous occasions between 2016 and 2020. Despite introducing the necessary competitive element to justify hillwalking as a true sport, Mountaineering Ireland told us that a competitive element in hillwalking wasn't really for them. As a result of Mountaineering Ireland's decision not to develop or promote hillwalking as a competitive sport, we saw this as a unique opportunity to lead the development, delivery and promotion of Sport Hillwalking as its global founder and official All-Ireland governing body.
In recent years, we have been seeing other Irish websites referring to hillwalking as a sport. This trend only began after we introduced our All-Ireland competitions and is a very clear, positive indication that our efforts to develop Sport Hillwalking are now being recognised and acknowledged by the Irish hillwalking community.
Hillwalking's evolution from leisurely pastime to fully-fledged sport began in 2009 when Kieron Gribbon first came up with the idea of creating a national-level Irish hillwalking competition. At that time, while writing the book Ireland's County High Points - A Walking Guide, he recognised the potential for that list of locations to be at the centre of an interesting All-Ireland competition. Following the publication of his book in 2012, Kieron went on to develop the Irish Major Geographical High Points list by combining 8 separate geographically-themed High Point sublists. Published in December 2015, this All-Ireland list of 187 locations and 5 of its sublists now have the honour of being the first original Irish hillwalking lists to be published in the 21st century and the first since the Hewitts, Dillons and Marilyns in the 1990s. The Irish Major Geographical High Points list was published simultaneously in book format and on the newly-created High Point Ireland website.
A few months later, in 2016, Sport Hillwalking officially became a true sport through the introduction of the first-ever All-Ireland hillwalking sports competition: the All-Ireland Highpointeering Individuals League. This ground-breaking points-based competition was delivered by High Point Ireland and has been run as an evolving format every year since.
In 2017, we introduced the Clubs, Counties and Provinces Highpointeering Leagues. In 2020, we created the All-Ireland Mountain Race for experienced challenge hillwalkers wishing to introduce a time-based person-versus-person competitive element. In 2020, the Highpointeering Leagues and the Mountain Race ran in parallel as two separate competitions between the Spring Equinox and Autumn Equinox each year. At the end of the season, the combined results of these two competitions allowed us to identify the individual and team champions in the first-ever All-Ireland Hillwalking Championships: the ultimate achievement in Irish Sport Hillwalking.
In 2021, due to a lack of interest, we decided to permanently cancel the Mountain Race as a hillwalking initiative. When we first came up with the idea for a time-based hillwalking competition, we knew there was a strong possibility that it would be unsuccessful. The timed race format is probably more akin to the mountain running community, making it a difficult concept for hillwalkers to get behind. Nonetheless, testing the race format in 2020 was a worthwhile research exercise in finding out what competitive Sport Hillwalkers' goals are and how far they are willing to go to achieve those goals. It also gave us an opportunity to develop a full set of 24 anytime mountain challenges which we will continue to promote as hillwalking initiatives over on The Ireland Walking Guide website. A new single-track competitive format started on 1st March 2022 which featured our newly-expanded list of 355 Irish Sport Hillwalking locations.
For the 2022 competition season, we introduced a set of Specialist Awards for the top-performing individuals in each of Sport Hillwalking's three disciplines: Highpointeering, mountaineering and challenge hillwalking. In January 2023, we announced the introduction of separate Mens and Womens award categories in all of our individuals competitions and that this would include the already-ended 2022 Sport Hillwalking season.
Our All-Ireland Sports Competitions are the first-ever national hillwalking competitions to be hosted anywhere in the world. As such, they provide an evolving template for other countries to replicate. In time, if other countries choose to follow our example, we could even look at the possibility of setting up the first-ever Hillwalking World Championships.
Having established itself as the global founder of Sport Hillwalking in 2016, High Point Ireland became the All-Ireland governing body for the sport on 10th May 2021. As such, High Point Ireland now delivers all official hillwalking competitions at national level across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Other specialist matters related to the broader activity of hillwalking outside of Sport Hillwalking (the primary one being insurance provision) remain within the remit of Mountaineering Ireland and the Ulster Federation of Rambling Clubs.
We invited Mountaineering Ireland to get involved in our All-Ireland hillwalking competitions on numerous occasions between 2016 and 2020. Despite introducing the necessary competitive element to justify hillwalking as a true sport, Mountaineering Ireland told us that a competitive element in hillwalking wasn't really for them. As a result of Mountaineering Ireland's decision not to develop or promote hillwalking as a competitive sport, we saw this as a unique opportunity to lead the development, delivery and promotion of Sport Hillwalking as its global founder and official All-Ireland governing body.
In recent years, we have been seeing other Irish websites referring to hillwalking as a sport. This trend only began after we introduced our All-Ireland competitions and is a very clear, positive indication that our efforts to develop Sport Hillwalking are now being recognised and acknowledged by the Irish hillwalking community.
All-Ireland sports competitions
