UKH

BBC News article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-66404775 about the curator of the Hoy Heritage Museum wanting to collect the names of people who have climbed The Old Man of Hoy

Send details at (Old Man of) Hoy

https://hoyheritage.wordpress.com/portfolio/old-man/

Climbing the Old Man (in 1992) was one of the stand out moments of my climbing career. It was part of a short foray during which we also did Stoer and climbed at Diabaig. I can recall standing on top and watching waves roll soundlessly in a long, long way below. Two of our team of four are now, sadly gone. John and Ken, a great experience.

Shame, I thought from the title that we were being invited to find a generic term for those belonging to the OM of H club. I was going to suggest Hoy poloi.

I used to feel a bit disappointed that I never got to do the Old Man of Hoy, but now feel a bit better, thanks to you, knowing that I do not belong to the Hoy polloi.

My good deed for the day! (Although „poloi“ is apparently only Ancient Greek for „people“

Well, strictly speaking "the common people". The way the term is used in England by posh people like me is rather snobby.

Did I climb it - or didn't I?

Did the birds puke on me or not?

Did the puffins look unimpressed as we abseiled to the beach or not?

Did one of our team say ' How do you abseil' when we were on the top or did he end up working for the access industry?

Is it still standing - or not?

Colin Rowe, Brian Tilley (deceased, tortured and murdered, Baghdad, by six Iraqi police who were never prosecuted), Paul Rennie, Howard Crumpton, 45 Commando, RM, climbed the East Face Route 1975.

Paul and Howard are you out there?

Properly educated people wouldn't use 'the' before 'hoi poloi', though...

Good point. Though that is of course how it's always said in the UK even by so-called 'educated' people.

Or, indeed, prononce the ‘h’!

Bailed from the top of the traverse/crack pitch as I thought it would lead to relationship breakdown if I persisted. 

Maybe the top pitch is mega, but for me it's by far the most overrated 4* climb I've been on. I'd give it 1* for the climbing and, being generous, 1* for the situation.

Doubt if I'd go back... 

That really depends on what you're looking for in a classic climb. The moves themselves may not be up to the standard of some of the other classics, but for many people that is more than made up for by the adventure, the remote situation and the unique summit experience.

We considered bailing from a pitch above that just because we were so disgusted by the quality and experience.

I agree. a 2* top pitch. But overall it might get 1* on Gogarth but no stars on Mingulay.

Arguably worth the strain for the pointiness.

Definitely the most overrated rock climb I've done. 

Adventure? You don't even have to swim, so not even a proper sea stack!

To be fair, I've not done that route, so I'm open to the possibility that it's really quite disgusting on a macro scale. Of the two (new) routes I have done on the Old Man, one was snappy and unstable (but in a thrilling way - at least I thought so anyway!)(The Orkneying Saga (E6 6a) (Actually called The Orkneyinga Saga but misspelled in the UKC database) and the other was sustained at the grade and brilliant climbing (GMB (E5 6a).

I think that brings this thread to an abrupt end. In a good way, obv

You've just completely missed the point. What drew you to be there in the first place? It's such a well known climb that to claim you were 'disgusted' by it is just unbelievable. I've done hundreds of 'classics' on all rock types from crumbly choss to iron-hard but few of them compare to the whole experience of the Old Man. Sure, the rock was iffy but so what? I'm pretty certain that half the rock on The Eiger north face is cack but it's undoubtedly an absolute classic that would stick in the memory a bit longer than a Gogarth or Mingulay route.

We were on Orkney climbing so suppose felt we "ought" to do it while we were there. Everything else we did there was better.

That is kind of the point; it was just so disappointing for such a hyped climb.

I don't think it was so much that the rock was iffy (I'm not even sure it was particularly). More just how poor and unpleasant the climbing was.

The last pitch of the GMB was very out-there both in position and climbing. Definitely one of the more memorable routes available.

I was getting married on the Saturday in Evie on Main island. On The Tuesday I ventured via the foot ferry to Hoy. Mark (an excellent human I met via UKC and then again once or twice in real life to check we were happy holding each other's ropes) picked me up from the ferry. I had promised my wife that even if I did not make the ferry home I would make contact by about half six to say I was well. 

We embarked on that awful walk down to the big slab base, then waited because there was a small group ahead. It was the biggest wildest furthest from help thing I had done. The hard pitch was mine, I struggled I scraped and thrutched. 

The penultimate pitch a fuller vomitted at me and hit my rain coat. I kid off a stone before embarking upon the final pitch. It took too long to fall and spooked me. 

We climbed, we succeeded, the geocache at the top is not logable. 

We descended (wild). We got back to signal at the tp of the cliff at about half eight, I could reassure my soon to be wife I was well. We headed off and found a hotel bar (I think), had a couple of beers and I was bought a whisky by a local fella for our success. 

Got Back to Rackwick bothy, No room in that in, I slept on the floor of the lavatory attached. Back to Main island in the morning and only a couple of days until we married. 

One of the best adventures of my life. 

More literally 'the masses', but this is exactly the kind of pedantry I do enjoy, and do not wish to discourage it.  

Location, location, location (plus history?). If the Original Route just happened to be located on the adjacent cliff rather than the biggest pinnacle in these islands, it would be nothing much and I doubt anyone would travel to climb it (let alone to a quite hard to get to place). I did the Old Man in '92 and Torro in '94. Now Torro is a brilliant route but you could say it's just one more of hundreds of brilliant routes on a mountainside. But (big but) it's Hoy that I can recall in far greater detail.

Great story - I didn't get married just after (!) but it was a BIG THING in my climbing career

‘I want to live like Hoy poloi, I want to do what Hoy poloi do’

It's funny, in spite of the bad rock, the Old Man sticks out a mile compared to other *** star routes I did in the same period. My second time up it was with my brother and a pal. My brother's wife and my folks came along to watch from the headland and within a few months he had started a family and hasn't been seen on rock since! So all in all, yeah, very memorable.

Absolutely.  I’ve done loads of routes with better climbing at that grade but none with quite the same ´I’ve done that’ impact with non-climbing friends!

I thought pitched two and five were fantastic climbing. One, three and four pretty forgettable from a purely climbing perspective. The setting and general experience more than made up for a few forgettable pitches of climbing.

It's obviously a great feature, in a great location and 100% worth climbing for that reason, but I just think it's overrated at 4*. I suppose you could argue that, by the strict definition of 4* it makes sense (best E1 sea stack multi-pitch in Scotland - I suppose I can't think of any better ones). Of it just got 2* or 3* I'd probably not grumble, but it's not a 4* route in my mind.

Maybe it gets +2* for the bonnington effect?

I think the 1938 route is an valid comparison. Also one I'd struggle to give more than 2*, but I'm still chuffed to have done it and I even enjoyed some bits....

P. s. I'm not trying to piss on anyone's chips, clearly many people have had an amazing adventure on it. Perhaps if I'd done it earlier in my climbing career, when not thinking about how horrible it was going to be to haul my partner up the sandy wide crack I might have enjoyed it more.

But objectively the climbing is average. 

Where is it given **** Not really the sort of thing I pay much attention to.

I'm sure nobody would disagree with that,

I remember them both equally. One for being utterly brilliant and the other for being  disappointingly crap.

I thought Atlantic Wall on Am Buachaille was a much better route. Good rock and good climbing, and, unlike the Old Man, it felt like a bit of adventure with the commitment of the swim there and back giving a proper sea stack experience. Altogether a far superior day out, memorable for the right reasons.

One thing about stacks is that, unlike many sea cliff climbs, there really isn't much commitment because you can abseil off at any point, so, without a swim, the Old Man really didn't feel committing or particularly adventurous at all. Certainly big routes on places like Mingulay or even a lot of single pitch sea cliff climbing feels a lot more adventurous to me.

Obviously conditions dependent, but I was surprised at just how high quality a lot of the climbing on the '38 route was! But it is an interesting comparison - both depending partly on historical significance as essential "ticks" for competent parties.

Yes, I suspect I would have got more out of it if I had done it in my teens before I had developed a discriminating taste in climbing rather than in my fifties when I had so much better stuff to compare it with!

I suspect that to get the most out of it (as with most adventure climbing) you need to be on the edge of your comfort zone. The people raving most about it sound like they hit it at a very good moment, when the environment was still very intimidating, the sense of commitment very real, and the climbing near their limit. I doubt any of those still applied when you did it. Once you no longer have much of any of these to sustain the trepidation and the uncertainty, the experience will likely struggle to live up to your expectations.

There is undoubtedly some truth in that, though I actually found the second pitch of the Old Man pretty desperate and ended up resorting to aid, though partly because I just lost interest with it all being so horrible!

We got the most out of it.  Drizzle, arms fully in that crack on pitch two, reliant on the friction of awkward, Buffalo-shod arms.  Ropes stuck on descent.  Free hanging prusik to retrieve ropes.

After, a mate told me he had soloed it.  Pissed on my chips.

I think that's accurate for my ascent this year. I'm 56 and only been climbing a couple of years. It was my first time following 5b and that second pitch was about my personal limit. The climbing may have been a bit sandy but finishing that pitch with the view to the sea below me was fantastic. The last pitch was a beautiful finish too. Combined with a 3am drive from FW to climb it and arriving at the top 15 minutes before sunset and then a stay in the both with a bottle of whisky made it a proper adventure for me (plus a great chat with the taxi driver who still remembers the original ascent as a boy). Plus, the final bonus..  all my family have heard of it!

Aha, so that explains all the negative hyperbole 😉

The Original Route has situation and character in abundance, and it takes a strong line of least resistance up an awesome iconic feature. Even if the climbing itself is not that great, it's well worth doing for those reasons.

Chatting the other day to one of the protagonists who established routes on Sron Ulladale, they were saying something similar - some of the celebrated routes on that crag are not necessarily the best of the best quality from bottom to top, but the attraction of doing them is still obvious.

They will probably be interested to hear that someone on UKC apparently climbed it 11 years prior to Bonington and the BBC getting there!