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This remarkable sea stack, the Old Man of Stoer, can be found by taking a walk of just over two kilometres along the cliff tops beyond the Stoer Head lighthouse in Assynt. The Old Man of Stoer is just over 70 metres high and back in 1953 the North Highlands Guide described it as “unclimbable”.
It was first climbed in 1967 by Dr Tom Patey, a GP living in Ullapool, known to his contemporaries as 'Dr Stack'. Where Tom led others have followed but even today this climb is graded by climbers as very severe. From the cliff top opposite the stack one can usually see abseil loops draped around the summit.
Another challenge that has to be faced before the climb itself is tackled is reaching the base of the stack through the surging sea. Tom Patey solved that problem by carrying a couple of ladders across the clifftops, lashed them together and used them to cross the powerful seas between the foot of the cliffs and the base of the sea stack.
Nowadays most climbers would shun such a method and instead the strongest will swim across with a rope, make a Tyrolean traverse which enables the remainder of the climbing group to cross over using the rope.
Sadly, on the 25th May 1970, Tom Patey fell to his death while climbing the Maiden, another sea stack of the north coast of Sutherland at Whiten Head. Although only 38 years old, he was a leading Scottish climber of his day, particularly excelling on winter routes. He is also well known for his humorous articles about climbing, many of which were published posthumously in the collection One Man's Mountains.
North-west Highland Place Names
The landscape of the North-west Highlands and the Gaelic language are intimately connected. Other languages have contributed to the richness of our place names, notably Norse, but the North-west Highlands have for centuries been a Gaelic landscape. In listing the meanings of place names I have relied on authoritative sources wherever possible. For further information about sources please refer to North-west Highland Place Names in the main menu.
Assynt; From the Norse Asaint or Asaint meaning ‘ridge end’.
Old Man of Stoer; See Stoer
Stoer; In Sutherland it is the name of a village, a bay, a peninsula, and probably most famously, as the ‘Old Man of Stoer’ a huge rock stack just off the coast. The Scottish Parliament website states that it is An Stòr in Gaelic and is derived from a Norse word meaning ‘large’. One might then ask, a large what? According to ‘Place names of Highlands and Islands in Scotland’ by Alex MacBain it is derived from the Norse word stor meaning ‘big’ and that it is commonly used as a prefix in place names. This makes more sense and implies that the name Stoer on its own is missing something. It may be that the name originally was applied to the huge rock stack that we now call the Old Man of Stoer. The Norsemen may have called it something like Stor Stakkr and over time the suffix was dropped as the name Stoer was applied to various other local features such as the bay, the peninsula and the settlement.
To confuse the situation further a Highland Council publication concerning The Old Man of Stoer claims that the name Stoer comes from the Norse word Staurr meaning ‘a pole’.
Ullapool; Gaelic is Ullabul derived from the Norse Ulli-bólstaðr meaning ‘Ulli’s stead’.
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