Tuesday 1 January 2013

Graham Paterson and the SkyeHi website

The whole of the Isle of Skye, as well as the world-wide climbing community, are still trying to come to terms with the tragic loss of our friend, Graham.

The power of the internet has proved its worth in spreading the news, and in enabling people to share their grief. People from all corners of the planet wanted to read the news for themselves, and especially to see happy pictures of Graham and Annie in the Cuillin, taking part in the walking and climbing that was so important in their life.

This blog - which generally gets an average of some 30 page hits a day, had 662 readers of my 29th December post (below) within 24 hours of the post being online.

More staggering though, is the number of hits on Graham's SkyeHi website. On average, the site normally received around 200 page hits per day. On 30th December, the day after the news of Graham's accident was released, the site had no fewer than 33,368 page hits. There have been over 64.000 page hits in total in the last four days. Unsurprisingly, by far the most popular page on the website is the photo gallery. The increased activity caused the site to 'crash' on three occasions, and I am sorry I have had to remove the video clips showing Graham climbing, because viewing of those was using too much bandwidth.

Every one of those thousands of visitors to the SkyeHi site will have shed a tear. And every one of those visitors will have felt for Annie and mentally sent their love to her. I hope, Annie, that at this awful time, you are able to feel all that love coming to you.

For now, the website will remain online, largely unaltered, as a small memorial to Graham.

No comments: