Organisers of The Fort William Mountain Festival are delighted to announce that Willie Gorman; climber & Creag Dhu Club member, outdoor instructor & geography teacher, hailing from Glasgow, is the 19th recipient of The Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture, sponsored by JAHAMA Highland Estates.
Willie took up climbing at the age of 15 and as an apprentice at the shipyard, quickly fell in with the Creag Dhu Mountaineering Club. During this time he climbed extensively in Scotland and also had a 3 month trip to the Alps to cut his teeth. When they had ticked off the hardest routes of the time, they soon began to put up their own more difficult, daring and bold routes! If you look through the guidebooks to Arran, Arrochar and the Southern Highlands, Glen Coe, Lowland Outcrops, Highland Outcrops South and Scottish Winter Climbs, you will see the name of Willie Gorman again and again. He has a huge rap sheet of new routes and crag developments, and this area of his climbing never abated throughout his life.
As a career Willie worked in Outdoor Education Centres, where he took groups into the hills and to the local crags, inspiring so many youngsters to get out and enjoy the Scottish mountains. After he completed his training he became a Geography teacher in Glasgow. He used this position and time to take groups of school pupils into the hills and mountains showing them what Scotland has to offer. He routinely took groups for expeditions around Glen Coe and Arrochar where young people from the city centre of Glasgow got to experience the mountain culture, learning the skills needed to be safe and enjoy the mountains.
When Willie finally retired from teaching at 64, he decided to become an instructor at GCC, where he had already been bringing groups since 1994, and had a single digit membership number. Willie worked for almost another two decades, until the autumn of 2025 when he retired, continuing to inspire the next generations along the way with an exceptional attitude and humility. There can’t be many individuals who have introduced more people into the sport of climbing than Willie has in his lifetime dedicated to climbing and mountain culture.