A climbing Guide to the Old Man Of Stoer
Herein follows a guide to climbing the original route on the Old Man Of Stoer – one of Scotland’s classic sea stack climbs. It is worth nothing that climbing on sea stacks is a serious undertaking and if you are not fully confident on your ability it is worth hiring a guide. This 60m high sandstone sea stack is very popular amongst climbers hosting some of the best quality rock for sea stack climbing with good protection and generally an easy (ish) route across to the stack. It sits at the Point of Stoer near to Lochinver and Clachtoll. It is separated from the mainland by a 7m wide channel of water at its narrowest point. But because it is a very common climb there is often a tyrollean in place so you don’t often have to swim! That being said if you are not 100% sure it is there take swim shorts, dry bags or a rope to rig a tyrollean (common practice is to leave this to make other peoples lives easier). But this is to be taken with caution as ropes left outside weather, the gear on the other side might or might not be good quality anymore with the sea air and salt corrosion so be prepared for there worst case of going in the sea!
The day starts at the Stoer Lighthouse car park (you can park overnight here but alas there is no toilet anymore) and then takes a 1 hour walk across the moors towards the headland. From here take a very very steep rocky path involving some scrambling/downclimbing to get to the bottom of the stack on the landward side. Here you can don swimming kit or rig a tyrollean or possibly if lucky go across one already in situ…
Getting Across and Pitch one of our Old Man of Stoer Guide
This section in our guide to climbing the Old Man Of Stoer covers getting across and climbing pitch 1. If you are rigging a Tyrolean then there is a great thread on the left at the bottom of the path – we recommend using this as it keeps your rope quite high and as such if tensioned correctly you do not touch the sea at all and also the rope does not drag on the edge of the rock so it does not get damaged. It requires 7 or 8mm thread – anything bigger is too hard to get through – it works but it’s a pain!
Alternatively don your swim wear and dry bags jump in and swim across! If you have a friendly volunteer then one person can swim and rig the Tyrollean on the other side requiring a n.3 hex, n.7 offset nut, n. 2 and n.4 if you want to be super careful. It used to have loads of pegs but they corroded away and someone half removed them.
Once across – pitch one (15m 5a) starts from directly above your Tyrollean and traverses straight across the horizontal breaks – allegedly some people have climbed this dry but we claim that to be a lie! It sits just above the sea and as such is always either moist or wet in the crack – the holds are really good – use the high crack for hands and the low one for feet – a n.3,4,5 & 6 cam come in very handy here! We would not recommend climbing this pitch using less than 4 bits of gear and even often use far more as a slip for either the leader or the second could end ups with them in the sea and then your climb may already be over so this guide to the Old Man of Stoer would be useless for you continuing!
Pitch 2 and Pitch 3
From the anchor on pitch one which is very handy having a n.1 and n.2 cam for – step left across the platform (it is possible to go directly up in the overhanging cracks and the grade goes more at HVS/E1 but the slabs on the left are sublime climbing and not worth missing! Step left to the slabs and then climb then following cracks (12m 4b) and breaks trending slightly rightwards to a good ledge around 12-15m higher – mid – large size cams are useful. It is worth building an anchor here either using a large nut and a 00 cam or a n.4 cam and a n.00 cam. It is worth noting this anchor is quite low down so we prefer the cam so the nut doesn’t lift out by accident. You can continue straight into pitch 3 and link them together and many people do not even considering these as two pitches, but over the sound of the sea it is often hard to hear for your seconds so it is worth building you anchor here and doing them as two pitches to save you hassle in the long run.
Pitch 3 (12m 4b) of our Old Man Of Stoer Guide then steps slightly left into the corner and climbs the crack trending rightwards to a small overlap – get a good n.3 cam in above you and pull over this in brilliant jugs to trend left again to a good ledge. Just above this ledge is a big chockstone – climb up onto this and belay in what many people call the cave. This pitch a n.1,n.2,n.3, n.4 and n.6 cam come in handy.
Traverse pitch 4 of our climbing guide to the Old Man of Stoer
From the cave which often has a tat anchor – if not using slings on threads is the best shout – traverse rightwards (10m ungraded) – a n.6 cam protects the first few moves before mid size cams work for the rest of the route. This pitch climbs further right than you expect it to – do not be fooled! Follow this guide and do not mess up this pitch otherwise your following pitch to the top of the Old Man of Stoer will have no gear! Traverse right trending slightly upwards to make a really weird move flopping onto a ledge that feels quite tight – take a couple of steps right (below you is a series of ledge with slightly loose blocks on them) and you will see the wide chimney crack above you – use n.0 and 1 cams for the anchor – taking 2x n.1 cams are really handy here! the anchor is quite friendly but the ledge and the gear are good if placed well (of course).
The summit push and abseil back down
This bit of our guide looks at the final pitch of climbing The Old Man Of Stoer and the abseil back off. Climb the slightly bulging out crack (20m 4b) above your 4th anchor using mid and large cams before trending left up a small ramp to reach the anchor summit – the pitch of climbing is great with good holds either side of the crack – try not to get too wedged into it. The anchor at the top is a big block on the summit of the stack – it is worth taking some tat to put around it in case the old one is manky but if it is then take it away with you and leave the fresh stuff in place! The abseil off goes about 55/60m back down to the big ledge at the bottom and is truly awesome with most of it being free hanging in the air! When you pull the ropes just be prepared for them to go in the sea – alas this happens most times although when the wind is up sometimes you get lucky and they land on the ledge. Take the swim or the Tyrollean back across to the mainland and admire what you just did!
To conclude our guide to climbing the Old Man Of Stoer
In conclusion for our guide to climbing the Old Man of Stoer – the rock is great quality, it is an awesome adventure and you may not even have to swim if you don’t want to… This is one of the most popular and friendly sea stacks to climb and is most likely the one climbed the most of all of them due to also being the easiest climbing. But if you are not comfortable climbing VS in the wet (the first pitch is the crux pitch) then you should look at getting a guide to take you up it instead!
When we have talked cams in this guide we have always referred to the dmm dragon cams!