Tom Patey was a leading Scottish climber during the 1950s and 1960s. Patey did many first ascents including the Muztagh Tower in 1956 and Rakaposhi in 1958 (both in the Himalayas) as well as many wild sea stacks or towers along the Scottish coast. The best known of these is the Old Man of Hoy, a tottering 450-foot sandstone pinnacle perched above rough sea swells on the island of Hoy. In 1967 Patey climbed the Old Man with Rusty Baille, who now lives in Prescott, Arizona, and Sir Chris Bonnington, who narrated the ascent for a live broadcast on the BBC. Patey was killed at age 48 in 1970 while rappelling off another Scottish sea stack.
Besides being a great climber, Tom Patey was also a superb climbing writer. He often turned a sardonic eye and his ironic wit onto the British climbing scene, lampooning the era’s great climbers in both articles and verses set to song. The following selection, one of my favorites, comes from his lasting essay The Art of Climbing Down Gracefully, which was published posthumously in Mountain Magazine in 1971 and published in the wonderful 1971 collection of Patey’s writing One Man’s Mountains.
The famed essay offers all the excuses that climbers come up with when they don’t go climbing or bail out on a difficult climb, especially as they get older. Patey writes that some wag suggested another title for the piece to him: “How to be a top climber without actually climbing.” In the essay he notes 14 ploys, including The “Off-Form” Ploy; The “Chossy Climb” Ploy; The “Responsible Family Man” ploy; and my favorite, The “Secret Cliff” Ploy. See if you see any of yourself or your friends in the ploy. "The Pass" refers to Llanberis Pass in Wales, and "Cloggy" is Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, its most famous cliff.
“This dark horse is seldom seen in the Pass, but makes a belated appearance at closing time. He speaks slowly and reluctantly with a far-away look in his eyes. ‘We’ve been sizing up a new crag,’ he eventually admits after much probing, ‘amazing why nobody spotted it before, but then climbers don’t get around much nowadays….We’re not giving away any details of course until we’ve worked it out….Should be good for at least twenty more top-grade routes….” Etcetera.
None of these routes ever appear in print, but this too can be explained away at a later day by the Anti-Guide-Book ploy: ‘Why deprive others of the joys of original exploration? We don’t want such a superb crag to suffer the fate of Cloggy, and become vulgarized by meaningless variations.’
Evasiveness can be finely pointed.
“What route did you climb today then?”
“Dunno, we haven’t named it yet!”—is perhaps one of the most spectacular.
Buy Tom Patey’s climbing book:
One Man’s Mountains An entertaining collection of climbing writings including The Art of Climbing Down Gracefully.
Photo above: Tom Patey, the man himself.
Photograph courtesy Colin Wells/BBC
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