A new book by Mike Dixon chronicles the brief but brilliant life of Dr Tom Patey: bard, musician, and one of Scotland’s foremost climbers and mountaineers. His story is one of pioneering ascents and boundless enthusiasm, and his spontaneity, carefree approach and ability to burn the candle at both ends remain legendary, several decades after his untimely death.
By drawing on Patey’s essays and verses the narrative is imbued with dry wit and gentle satire, and brought to life by unseen images from renowned photographer John Cleare and the Patey family archive. Supported by a foreword from Mick Fowler and first-hand insights from some of the leading climbers of the last century, including Sir Chris Bonington, Joe Brown and Paul Nunn, One Man’s Legacy celebrates a complex, larger-than-life character who rightly deserves his place in mountaineering history. The following extract describes when 16 year old Tom took a trip to Bob Scott’s with some of the fellow college pupils who helped shape him.
New Year 1949. The Cairngorms were in full winter condition and blanketed under a substantial depth of snow. Inspired by Sir Hugh’s Munro’s 1891 list of Scottish peaks over 3,000ft, a youthful Patey and some of his fellow Robert Gordon’s College pupils had based themselves at Bob Scott’s bothy at Luibeg for some ‘hill bashing’.
The bothy was a popular destination for Hogmanay, and as many as 40 climbers were housed in the main room and various outbuildings. Bob Scott, the keeper, lived in the adjacent cottage with his wife. He had worked for the Mar Estate since leaving school at the age of 12 and was considered one of the quintessential characters of the Cairngorms in the ’50s and ’60s.
The charge at the bothy was one shilling a night, which helped supplement the stalker’s meagre agricultural wage. Firewood was free as long as guests helped with the sawing and chopping.
Scott, who had an infectious laugh and a great sense of humour, would often give the occupants an entertaining natural history lesson. He was a master storyteller, particularly about his war experiences, and he could deflate anybody with pretensions or self-importance with a cutting phrase delivered in his sonorous North-East accent.
Scott found Patey and his friends amusing, and he called them the ‘Horrible Hielanders’. On one occasion, he expressed disappointment that one lad had lost his knife and fork, and butter and jam were sticking to all their stuff. Patey showed his naivety by drying his wet boots over a primus stove, and one of them became so malformed that he could not get it on his foot the next day. Upon telling them off for swearing, Scott received the reply: ‘We can’t get harmed with the minister’s son here,’ as if they had some sort of diplomatic immunity because Patey’s father was a minister. The keeper’s blunt retort quickly rectified this assumption, and from then on, profanities were uttered well out of earshot. Adam Watson, who first met Patey at Luibeg, was also unimpressed: ‘Two young bodies, one Patey of Ellon and another of Aberdeen, wandered in and created a hell of a mess of spilt oatmeal, porridge and paraffin.’
Photo © Ian Patey collection
Bill Brooker, one of the leading lights in Scottish mountaineering at that time, recalls the temperature that New Year:
It was right down into the bulb … [even the] eggs were frozen hard. We were ensconced in the bothy in fair comfort among the straw and so on. That night, a group of young lads — one or two clad in kilts no less — came off the mountains, having spent the night on Ben Macdui, and were ignominiously shoved into Bob Scott’s stick shed, which had open wooden slatted sides and was not at all snug. I later discovered one of them had been Tom.
Patey, who had a wide repertoire of classic literary quotations, described conditions inside Luibeg by quoting Keats: ‘Ah bitter chill it was.’ A hole in the iced-over burn had to be opened each day to access the water below. Later, the youngsters were allowed into the main bothy, where Patey’s eyes were opened to another way of experiencing mountains, so much more vibrant and exciting than the one he and his school peers were used to.
There was, of course, a strict pecking order, and those considered most important sat closer to the comfort of the fire. Two armchairs were reserved for Brooker and Malcolm (Mac) Smith, while the Horrible Hielanders were confined to the chillier recesses of the room.
Smith, in his late 20s, was the authority on Cairngorm crags and corries at that time. A member of the Etchachan Club, he became a ringmaster and mentor to a younger generation, including Patey, whose lives revolved around escaping to the hills. Smith was a polymath with a keen interest in insects, plants, photography, jazz, literature and debate, and someone very different from the callow youths and stuffy adults that Patey knew.
At 17, Brooker’s star was rising on the Cairngorm climbing scene. He was just a little older than Patey but had the social skills and personality to assimilate into any group, a feature that endeared him to many throughout his life. His talent for climbing emerged at an early age: at 14, he had cycled to Skye with a fellow Scout and soloed the Inaccessible Pinnacle.
While Smith was the Chieftain of the Luibeg Clan, Patey characterised Brooker as the ‘young Lochinvar’ who ‘cut a more dashing figure, the complete counterpart to Mac’s slightly reserved manner. To all outward appearances, he was merely another pimply-faced schoolboy like ourselves, full of wild talk.’
After making the first winter ascent of Crystal Ridge in Coire Sputan Dearg, Brooker and Smith returned late to the bothy with evident signs of having engaged in a tussle but beaming and elated by the climb. Visiting some obscure Munro Top seemed anodyne by comparison. Patey had glimpsed a vitality in these ‘real mountaineers’ and the exhilarating activity they pursued, which caused him to take stock:
These men spoke of icy vigils and gigantic ice-falls; routes that finished long after dark; remote bivouacs in faraway corries; riotous nights in bothies; late-night dances in Braemar and brimming tankards in the Fife Arms. Adventure, unconventionality, exuberance — these were the very elements missing from our scholarly conception of mountaineering which had led us with mathematical precision up and down the weary lists of Munro’s Tables.
That New Year precipitated a radical change in Patey’s attitude and put him in contact with men who would have a significant influence on him and with whom he would subsequently establish lifelong friendships. This exposure to a more adventurous way of life in the mountains opened up his horizons, and in time, he would become the chief prophet of that holy trinity of adventure, unconventionality and exuberance.
One Man’s Legacy by Mike Dixon is published by the Scottish Mountaineering Press and will be available from all good bookshops from early December.