Old Man of Hoy - Climbing Records

Climbing Records

The stack was first climbed by Chris Bonington, Rusty Baillie and Tom Patey over a period of three days in 1966. On 8–9 July 1967, an ascent featured in The Great Climb, a live BBC three-night outside broadcast, which had around 15 million viewers. This featured three pairs of climbers: Bonington and Patey repeated their original route, whilst two new lines were climbed, by Joe Brown and Ian McNaught-Davis, and by Pete Crew and Dougal Haston.

A number of routes have been climbed, the hardest at the British grade of E10/11, a free and direct variant of "The Long Hope Route", first climbed by Dave MacLeod in June 2011. In an average year, the stack is climbed 20–50 times, mostly by the original and easiest route at E1 (5b). A small RAF log book in a Tupperware container is buried in a cairn on the summit, as an ascensionists' record. Most climbers abseil on the descent, although care is required to avoid jamming the ropes on retrieval - a stash of abandoned ropes bears testimony to this.