Tom Patey

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Tom Patey (20 February 1932 — 25 May 1970) was a Scottish climber, mountaineer and writer. Although he was a leading Scottish climber of his day, particularly excelling on winter routes, he his probably best known for his humorous writings about climbing, many of which were published posthumously in the collection One Man's Mountains.

He was born in Scotland and educated in Aberdeen at Ellon Academy and Robert Gordon's College. He first became interested in climbing while he was in the Scouts, but it was at the University of Aberdeen, where he trained as a doctor, that he first revealed his full talent as an exploratory climber. Much of his early exploratory routes were on Lochnagar and neighboring Cairngorms. A dedicated climber he often dropped all other commitments for the prospect of a good climb. Always liked to travel light up to the point of leaving gloves behind on some ice climbs and had a healthy disrespect for climbing ropes unless absolutely necessary

He climbed extensively in Scotland, (making the first winter traverse of the Cuillin ridge with Hamish MacInnes David Crabbe and Brian Robertson in 1965), as well as achieving notable ascents in the Alps and the Himalayas including the first ascent of the Muztagh Tower (7273m) with John Hartog in 1956 and Rakaposhi (7788m) in 1958 with Mike Banks. In 1968, he and the mountaineer Ian Clough were the first to climb Am Buachaille, a sea stack off the coast of Sutherland. He and Chris Bonington pioneered the route up the Old Man of Hoy which was repeated with others on a live televised BBC outside broadcast on July 8-9 1967. At the time of his death he was working as a local GP in Ullapool, in the far north-west of Scotland. He was killed abseiling from another sea stack off Scotland's northern coast.

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