DID YOU CLIMB THE OLD MAN?

update: We have been overwhelmed with the response and will be working this winter to gather all the information and put up a new page on the website and then work out how we display those names in the small Old Man of Hoy exhibition room in Rackwick! Thank you to everyone and yes we still want you to add your name! You can comment below or contact us here.

In 1967 television history was made when the Old Man of Hoy was conquered by a team of six on screen. Chris Bonington, Tom Patey, took the East Face; Joe Brown and Ian McNaught-Davis, the South Face; Peter Crew and Douglas Haston took the South-East Arête. A further crew of four climbers- Hamish MacInnes, John Cleare, Rusty Baillie and Ian Clough carried cameras and transmitters.

‘Close up of pebbly beach, rowing boat, birds, crofthouse, waves crash, zoom to pinnacle of the Old Man of Hoy, large tractor with caterpillar wheels hauling BBC equipment across bog…’ So begins the shot list for the most ambitious outdoor broadcast of the time.

The event was big news across the UK but it was even bigger news in Rackwick. The influx of climbers, film crew and Scots Guards (who carted the gear including a shed) swelled the numbers in the valley considerably.

Hear our Old Man of Hoy podcast and read more about his fascinating history here.

Are you part of the Old Man of Hoy story?

Have you climbed the Old Man? Tell us about your experience and include your memories and photographs in the Old Man of Hoy archive at Hoy Heritage Centre and Rackwick museums – contact us here or leave your name and the year you climbed in the comments box. Thanks!

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images: Hoy Heritage Archive

91 thoughts on “DID YOU CLIMB THE OLD MAN?”

      1. My husband John Mountain. His friends David Helliwell and Terry King did the first free ascent of the Old man in September 15th 1967. They /we have photographs of them on the top. They scratched their names and the date on a large slab of rock. John, Terry and Dave are now all in their 70’s and have just arrived back from a climbing trip to Cornwall. My husband John has done it 3 times. One was on the 50th anniversary of their 1967 triumph. We also have a photo of the original hand drawn map from the first ascent. Xxxkath Mountain xxxMorpeth Northumberland xx.

  6. I climbed the East Face Route (Original) in poor style with James Reeley on Tuesday 5th June 2012. A lovely day, I led pitches 1, 3, and 5 but fell at the crux annoyingly. The abseil from the top of pitch 2 to the ground was a long time in space. We were rewarded with whisky by an excellent local in the Hoy Hotel bar afterwards.

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  7. Original Route on 21 June 2004 with Mike Woodbrige. Almost bird free on the way up, then sat on the top belaying Mike up the last pitch with a puffin perched about 10 feet away – magic!

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      1. My son, Tomas and I climbed the stack on the 6th august 2017 with Mike Pescod as our guide. It was the first of the three Tom Patey climbed stacks we climbed that week. Tomas was 12 years old.
        Good luck with the project. Great idea. – Charlie Stephenson

  10. We climbed the old man of hoy, by the original route on 8 August 2013.
    Tony Johnson, Gavin Dee and myself (Kevin Faux) arrived at the view point at 4pm, to stash out kit for the following day, but decided to seize the glorious afternoon sun and grab a quality ascent in good conditions. We managed not to be benighted the same day after sumit and descent by free hanging abseil. Though the walk back to the accomodation was getting dark. We met the fulmars face to face and used the historic wooden gear with pride.

    A great day with good friends in a remarkable position.
    Hopefully remembered for ever.

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  11. I did the Old Man of Hoy by the Original Route as a 16 year old, back in 1988 with my father (Paul Williams).

    We were a team of 4 (the other two were from Berghaus – one guy was called Stefan & the other was also called Paul).

    A cracking adventure!

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  12. 29 August 1989
    East Face Route.
    Stan Pearson
    Nigel Holmes
    John Bennison and two others Alan & Chris.

    Lashed with rain all the way from Edinburgh to Hoy. Rain stopped, we climbed it then rain started again as we got back to the bothy and it lashed it all the way back to Edinburgh.
    A memorable weekend in good company.

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  13. 8th October 2015

    Craig McMahon & Clement Quinn
    Climbed Original Route. Swinging leads. What a great day and the only dry day we had on our visit from the Lake District & Ireland.

    I have pictures and a blog if these are any help?

    Many thanks

    Craig

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  14. I climbed the Old Man on 30th August 1990 with my pal Alan. I found the chimney pitch awkward as I had to bridge up it because I was wearing a rucsac with my Highland Pipes in it. It was so windy on top that I had to sit down while I played a tune, so the photo Alan took doesn’t quite reflect the dramatic occasion!
    I can email you the photo if you’d like.

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      1. Sadly I can’t remember the tune I played – I was so conscious that I still had to abseil off the stack that I think my brain shut out all extraneous information, the name of the tune being one such bit of information! It might have been Crossing the Minch (I did play that, appropriately, on the top of the Old Man of Stoer), but I didn’t know any tune with the Pentland Firth in its title! Best regards, John Saunders

  15. Colin Rowe, Brian Tilley (deceased), Paul Rennie, Howard Crumpton, East Face Route, 1975, 45 Commando, Royal Marines, RM Condor, Arbroath, Scotland. Brian and I climbed together, Howard and Paul climbed as a separate team. Brian and I were 18 years old. I led every pitch. Later, Brian went on to lead Right Wall E5.

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    1. Thank you Colin. I will add your names and am very sorry to hear of the tragic and violent circumstances of your colleague Brian Tilley’s death. I have omitted the traumatic details in this forum.

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  17. Climbed via East Face route in 2019.
    Planned to propose on the top, but too windy so we had to make a quick descent. Ended up proposing on the walk back to Rackwick Bay instead.

    Will Johnson
    Lydia Johnson

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  18. I climbed the Old Man of Hoy 16th August 2013, the hardest route I’ve completed both mentally and physically, but well worth the determination nation and effort, it was a fantastic experience, I loved watching the seabirds flying about below, thankfully I avoided the fulmar vomit unlike one of my fellow climbers!

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  21. Iain Shepherd, Ian Maclean and Dom ? climbed Original Route on 3 July 1988 after bailing out from an Inverness Mountaineering Club meet to Ben Loyal due to poor weather on the mainland but a fine forecast for Orkney. We managed to avoid the worst of the fulmar vomit and were entertained by the puffins landing nearby. Had a wee whisky on the summit and a bigger celebration at Rackwick bothy that evening and it was light enough to play football on the beach at midnight.

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  22. Climbed East Face route 10th Sept 2003 with Ian Cartwright. Lovely day. Wind and rain the following day.

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  24. To add to Nigel Holmes Post of August 14th the two other climbers were Chris Gilley and Alan Gamble.
    We all agreed that it was one of the most memorable climbing experiences we have had

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  25. It was the week of the Brexit referendum and the forecast was iffy on Orkney. Determined to make the most of the better days, Ian Burton, Ferdia Earle and myself had a grand plan to climb the Old Man and a route on Rora Head on the same day. We were up and down the Original Route pretty quickly (60m ropes get you down in two abseils, by the skin of your teeth), but at the top of Rora Head our luck ran out, and we were forced to sit out an hour of hammering rain hunched like gargoyles with no shelter whatsoever. Meanwhile our friends (Tom Powell, Rozzy Pedder and Hertha Taverner-Wood) were enjoying the Original Route at a much more leisurely pace, and with the westerly gales the rain didn’t touch them! We heard the Brexit result on the ferry back to mainland Orkney, an unwelcome return from a world of steepling red sandstone to the world at large.

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  26. I was part of a University of Birmingham team who climbed the East Face Route on 10th August 1979. The weather was spectacular, the fulmars mostly fledged, and the main anxiety was the prospect of the scary, overhanging, two-pitch abseil to get down!

    John Hooper and Jim Milton
    Chris Kelsey and Mike Grain
    Ian Tomlinson and Claire Harkness
    Dave Armstrong and Dave Garnett

    The weather broke the following day and by the time we got back to Stromness on the Sunday the only dry places were the pubs and the small shipping container on the dock where the whole team spent the night before catching the ferry.

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  29. I climbed the old man on April the 19th 2022, I had only been climbing just over a year, I lead pitches 2-4 managed to make the accent and decent with no bird issues and just as I was about to put my rope in my bag we got sprayed, quality accent and a day that will be with me forever.

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    2. Do you have a record of my father, John Mountain and his pals Dave ‘Snod’ Halliwell and Terry King’s climbs? They’ve done it twice: in 1967 and again in 2017. They have fabulously atmospheric photos from their first ascent and hilarious ones from the last.

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    3. Do you have a record of my father, John Mountain and his pals Richard ‘Snod’ Halliwell and Terry King’s climbs? They’ve done it twice: once in 1967 and again in 2017. The photos from the first ascent are hugely atmospheric.

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  30. September 1985
    Raz Frew
    Derek Scott
    Al Macleod
    Kas Taylor
    Nick Sharpe
    Jock Pirrie

    mass ascent, The wind blowing straight through the top crack…. We abseiled off in one go, using a 500 ft rope tied right round the top. Wind blew me away from the land bridge and over the water, had to tie slings above and drop off the end of the rope! Then drag it back to dry land for the others.

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  31. I have done the OMoH twice!
    First time in 1977 with Jeremy Felstead – just the two of us – no mobile phone – great weather and the ferry went “outside” the scapa flow on thw way there so we say the climb. Will never forget seeing the top section coming into view as you walk in – made us very nervous. We did have a number 4 friend – had just come out and there were wooded wedges in not very good nick. Weather was great in June and we took about 4 4hours round trip.
    Second time with my then wife and her brother Jeff in 1886 – we got food poisoned in ther bothy at Rackwicke bay and we worried it had something to do with radiation coming over from Russia. We were lucky – we did the route and it started raining just as we finished abbing. Both ascents were the Original route as per Hard Rock – the final pitch is just brilliant although on the 2nd go there didnt seem to be much to belay on on top.

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  33. Hello Hoy Heritage Museum!
    My wife and daughter have already contacted you, however I feel obliged to give you a bit more information on early Old Man ascents.
    The original ascent by Bonnington, Patey and Baillie was in 1966. The BBC at the time was interested in putting on ‘exciting’ outside broadcasts, and the following year, in August, Bonnington, Patey and Baillie returned, part of a larger cast of the top British rock climbers of the day.
    The climb now attracted wide attention, and the following month, a team of 3 climbers from the Parnassus MC in Sheffield, were the 3rd group to ascend the Old Man. The climbers were J.Hadfield, J. Whiteley, and R. Turner. They built a cairn on top, inscribed with their names and dated 14th August 1967. (I have a photo of the cairn).
    A few weeks later, I was in Scotland with pals David Helliwell (Snod) and Terry King (Rance), all of us also being Parnassus MC members. The weather was foul in Lochaber, so we decided to head for the Old Man. Snod and I were 21, Terry only 17. Despite being the ‘youth’, Terry was a strong climber even then, and managed the big wide crack without aid, probably the first to do this. We topped out on 15th September 1967, and built our own cairn.
    Years later, living in Northumberland, my Geordie climbing squad decided that my 60th birthday should be marked by a repeat ascent. This was achieved on the 28th July 2006, and the team was Ian Murray, Bob Smith, Alec Burns, John Earl and Tom Smith.
    Ever since the 1967 ascent, Snod had joked (?) about a 50th anniversary ascent, and despite Rance having retired from climbing for over 30 years, another foray was undertaken in 2017. We topped out for the second time on 26th September 2017.
    I have a few photos of all 3 ascents, and also a photo of a hand-drawn sketch of the Old Man, drawn by one of the TV team, showing routes, and signed by all the superstars on that ascent.
    Hope that helps!
    John Mountain (aka Gobbo)

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    1. Snow added, “perhaps you should have mentioned Raymie and Lizz and the captain of the boat in 2017 who had been the cabin boy on the Watchful in 1967.”

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  34. Great recollections! We will look forward to collating these. Yes please do send photographs and a photograph of the drawing sounds splendid! Ye! For an old man with one leg this project is growing arms snd legs for him.

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  35. A party of 4 climbed the original route in September 1990 – Paul Smart, Jon Ord, Marcus Bailie, Sam Dring. It was a cold, windy and damp day, so we didn’t linger on the summit. It felt like a mini-expedition, having travelled up overnight from North Wales to catch the first ferry over. Have always wanted to re-visit…

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  36. Bernie Ross and Mike Chapman. Climbed it in August 1977. Epic journey from Manchester – one motorbike loaded high with the two of us and all our camping and climbing gear. No road or hostel on Hoy then. Walked across the island, wild camped at Rackwick Bay, and climbed it the following day. Lots of fulmar issues on the upper pitches. You’d reach up for a ledge, pull up, and come face to face with a fulmar chick projectile pukeing at you. Lots of puffins too. Highly entertaining abseil off! Then slowly home with more climbing en route in Skye, then Glencoe and the Lakes. What a trip!

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  37. We climbed the old man in August 95. 4 climbers, 2 teams. We’ve got pictures if you’d like them. Original route.

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  38. On the 25/6/2016 I climbed The Old Man of Hoy with my good friend Danny Brown. It was a magic experience, starting with the beautiful ferry crossing from stromness to the island. Next the surreal taxiing to the bothy at Rackwick bay, a place you feel so privileged to be visiting, basic but sufficient to offer the sanctuary of shelter. We bivvied in the walled ‘garden’ as an expertly organised team undertaking a serious expedition to ascend a route on St Johns Head had commandeered the bothy’s surfaces to lay out their inventory. Then comes the adventure of the walk in to the stack, the varied climbing complete with fulmars, who played nice and being treated by Puffins and Razorbills on the summit, who acted like they’re neve seen a human before, curious but not scared. The sky turned from moody and overcast to cloudless, as if a hot knife had been run the the Skye, a hard edge of cloud base just drifting away, leaving a second sea of blue above instead of below us. Back to the bottom by abseil, passing the piles of history at the belays, then back to the bothy for pasta and Matterson’s, a dram(or 10) and the disbelief of a visit from Orcas in the bay. You couldn’t write it.
    This lead to a visit to Yesnaby Castle and another sea stack adventure the next day…one much less perfect, but equally as fulfilling, but that’s another story….

    By Tom Rogers.

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  41. Myself, Brian Thornhill and Colin Harden both from Sheffield climbed the Original Route April ish 1995. Colin’s partner (Charlie), now his wife, was sat on the cliff top snapping away with a Canon Camera with telephoto lens and we both carried small cameras so I have a full album of stage photo’s.
    We did sign the book at the top.

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  42. 20/September/1989. I (Ian Stranack) climbed the Original East Face Route with a lad called Martin from South America. We were living in a shared house in Ashby De La Zouch at the time, where we were both on our placement year from university. He had never climbed before he met me, and three months later we went on this massive adventure north! He fell asleep at the wheel on the A9! We bivid under some stairs in Stromness and got the little foot ferry over to Linksness, Hoy. We walked in from there to stay in the bothy in Rackwick bay. The day we did it, we were only going over to “have a look” and so set out quite late. We did it that day, but had a mare abseiling down and got our ropes stuck in the tat – this was the abseil back around the corner to the top of the first stance. I later learned that you can abseil to the ground from that stance using 60m ropes. We had to cut our ropes and make a few short abseils to get to the ground.

    We then had to walk up the cliff to get out. “Walking with consequences” I believe is the phrase! Anyway, we made it, and back at the bothy we drank a bottle of co-op scotch – I still have the bottle.

    We blagged a lift on a coach full of American tourists to get out from Rackwick. The bonus of that was that we got to see the Dwarfie Stane! Bivi under the stairs again and the big ferry back to Scotland and a long drive back to Preston (where I substantively lived at the time) just in time for last orders at the Ship Inn!

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  43. I climbed the original route in August 1992 with Simon and Matthew Nadin. An epic adventure from start to finish, including the journey to and from the island. It featured a twelve hour drive from Manchester (each direction), hitchhiking, bivvying in a garden with a 3-legged dog, partying in a hotel, another wet bivvy on the beach, picking up bizarre hitchers, to name but a few events.

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  45. Hello Hoy Heritage Museum

    We climbed the Ordinary route with the Space station finish in July 2017.

    Scott Garcia & Edward Nind

    Blowing an absolute gale but we didn’t feel it until the top. A magic memory.

    Good luck with the project.

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  46. just wondering how the gathering of information on the many ascents of the Old Man were coming along???xxxxxkath Mountain & family xx

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  47. I climbed the Old Man in late May 1975 with Dave McDonald. I believe that I was the first woman to do the climb having checked the log book at the time. The message I left was ‘ grand’ !
    It was a long weekend adventure traveling up from Newcastle and rushing to catch ferries between the islands. We were picked up on Hoy by Mr Moses in his taxi. After a dawn start, to get ahead of two Swiss lads, the day was great, despite the fulmars, and we were up and down in good time to catch return ferries and dash back south. I returned to Hoy about 14 years ago in order to spend longer there and appreciate the stack and the island’s magnificence.
    Fran McDonald ( nee Bashford as was then!)

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  48. Hello all Old Man conquerors (sounds too colonial) let’s say Old Man Club members! We had hoped to get the Old Man Roll Call up online by now but we haven’t managed it. Please bear with us, we will reach the summit soon. Thanks

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