Mission to climb five highest peaks in Ireland and the UK in memory of Coast Guard volunteer Caitríona Lucas

The group includes Ms Lucas’s husband Bernard who started the annual challenge named after his late wife to raise funds for the Burren Chernobyl Project.

Ms Lucas, a mother of two, was just 41 when she lost her life in September 2016 — the first Irish Coast Guard volunteer to die on duty.

Weather permitting, Bernard Lucas and Deirdre Linnane from Co Clare and Cormac Coyne from the Aran island of Inis Oírr will set out on June 15 for the 72-hour endurance test.

The overall ascent of 5,296 metres will start with Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales, moving on to England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike in Cumbria, according to Mr Lucas.

“We are hoping to climb two of the five peaks on the first day, as in Snowdon and Scafell Pike and then move on to Ben Nevis in Scotland after a six-hour drive there,” Mr Lucas says.

The three mountaineers will then take the ferry to Northern Ireland to tackle Slieve Donard in Co Down. They will finish their third day with a long drive south to Kerry for an ascent of Ireland’s highest mountain, Carrauntoohill. “We have the use of a small camper van, and are totally unsupported, in that we will be sharing the driving,” Mr Lucas adds.

If they meet their time targets, they will complete the challenge on the Kerry summit on June 18, the late Ms Lucas’s birthday. They expect to be joined by experienced supporters on Carrauntoohill.

The first Caitríona Lucas Challenge took place in 2018 and involved climbing 26 mountains across 32 counties in just 10 days. The following year Mr Lucas and five colleagues — Mr Coyne, Ms Linnane, Michael Healy, Pauliina Kauppila and Eoin Keane — travelled to Greenland for the Arctic Circle trail. An estimated average of 300 people annually tackle the 160km wilderness walk.​

The Covid-19 pandemic forced a pause to further challenge plans but it resumed last year with a successful ascent of ­Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain at 5,895 metres, by the three climbers.

In each case, funds raised were donated to the Burren Chernobyl Project, established in 1993 to help the child victims of the fallout from the Chernobyl reactor explosion of 1986.

Caitríona Lucas was an advanced coxswain with Doolin Coast Guard in Co Clare and had offered to help out the neighbouring Coast Guard unit from Kilkee in the search for a missing man.

She died after the Kilkee rigid inflatable boat (RIB) capsized in a shallow surf zone on September 12, 2016.

An inquest into her death last November, which returned a verdict of misadventure, heard how she could have been rescued. Her legal team had sought a verdict of unlawful killing.

The jury made seven recommendations on safety management which they said should be adopted by the Irish Coast Guard.