Mountaineering Ireland Lynam Award 2026 - Andy Kirkpatrick

Mountaineering Ireland are delighted to announce that Andy Kirkpatrick is this year's recipient of the Lynam Award. Mountaineering Ireland is delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2026 Lynam Award will be Andy Kirkpatrick, one of Britain’s most accomplished big wall climbers, winter mountaineers, writers and speakers. The US magazine Climbing once described Andy as a climber with a "strange penchant for the long, the cold and the difficult", with a reputation "for seeking out routes where the danger is real, and the return is questionable, pushing himself on some of the hardest walls and faces in the Alps and beyond, sometimes with partners and sometimes alone." Andy's specialty is big wall climbing and winter expeditions, which involves pitting himself against vertical climbs of over 1000 metres (that’s two and a half-world trade centers), often in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees. Andy has scaled Yosemite's El Capitan - one of the hardest walls in America - over twenty-four times, including three solo ascents and a one-day ascent (18h), as well as climbing it with a paraplegic climber, his thirteen-year-old daughter, and a blind friend. One of these ascents was a 12-day solo of the Reticent Wall, viewed at the time as perhaps the hardest climb of its type in the world, and the subject of his award-winning book Psychovertical. Beyond his climbing achievements, Andy is an award-winning author, filmmaker and speaker. His books, including Psychovertical and Cold Wars, have won the prestigious Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. His ability to tell compelling stories about adventure, risk, failure and perseverance has brought the realities of extreme climbing to audiences far beyond the climbing community. As Andy himself says: ““I haven’t climbed Everest, skied to the poles, nor sailed single-handed around the world. The goals I set out to accomplish aren’t easily measured or quantified by world records or ‘firsts’. The reasons I climb, and the climbs I do, are about more than distance or altitude — they are about breaking barriers within myself.” Andy has also taken part in many expeditions, including four winter expeditions to Patagonia, a crossing of Greenland, first ascents in Antarctica, and too many nights spent suffering to mention. The stories that Andy has brought back from these expeditions have become modern classics in the climbing world and have brought new meaning to the words 'epic' and 'cold'... It is this combination of extraordinary climbing achievements, resilience, storytelling and a willingness to challenge his own limits that makes Andy Kirkpatrick a fitting recipient of the Mountaineering Ireland Lynam Award. The event will take place in the Chartered Accountants Ireland Lecture Hall, 47-49 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, on Thursday 19th November. Doors open at 6.30pm, and we recommend getting there early in order to get seating, and to enjoy some refreshments prior to the lecture. The lecture will commence at 7.30pm. You won’t want to miss this! We hope you can join us for an evening of stories, insights and inspiration!