Irvine Butterfield 1936-2006


[courtesy of alt.obituaries]

Irvine Butterfield
A walker and writer whose guidebook helped put Scotland's mountains on
the map

Ed Douglas
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 May 2009 20.03 BST


The practice of climbing hills of more than 3,000ft in Scotland, known
as "Munro-bagging", is now well known. But when Irvine Butterfield,
who has died aged 72 after a long illness, published The High
Mountains of Britain and Ireland in 1986, it was still an esoteric,
even eccentric cult. His lavish guidebook went on to sell 50,000
copies in hardback - good business for a hill-walking book - and
inspired large numbers of new enthusiasts to explore Britain's
mountains.


The huge success of High Mountains gave Butterfield a strong platform
from which to campaign on the issue he cared for most passionately,
the defence of Scotland's wild
landscapes. His commitment was prodigious: he volunteered huge amounts
of time, donated funds and helped to found several organisations,
including the influential conservation charity the John Muir Trust.

It was no matter that Irvine was born in the North Yorkshire village
of Farnhill, between Keighley and Skipton. Although he was proud of
his Tyke roots, he showed the zeal of the
convert in his love of Scotland's hills. In 1960, Butterfield had been
sent north to Perth as a young customs and excise civil servant from
his first posting in London. To a young man raised near the Yorkshire
moors, Scotland's grander scale was immediately compelling.


His first Scottish hill was the Cobbler, attractive but well below the
magic height of 3,000ft. His first Munro was Stob Diambh, the peak of
the stags, an eastern outlier of Ben Cruachan. In 1971 he completed
the round - there are currently 284 Munros (named after Sir Hugh
Munro, who first catalogued them) - on Ladhar Bheinn in the
spectacular and wild Knoydart peninsula. Not many more than 100 had
finished before him and there were no guidebooks. Now Munro-bagging is
an industry in itself.

Butterfield was a bury man, not physically suited to teetering up rock
faces, but he had an instinctive appreciation for the landscape, and
his warm and sometimes gruff personality could not help but show it.

That emotional attachment proved the wellspring for a host of
effective and determined interventions to protect Scotland's landscape
and encourage people to enjoy it. He
helped set up the Mountain Bothies Association, established to
maintain the remote shelters so many walkers and cyclists rely on in
the Highlands and, in 1970, was a founder member
of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, giving up thousands of
hours of free time to the fledgling organisation.

Butterfield's mantra was that you should give something back to the
mountains, and his civil service background made him a good organiser,
alongside his talent as a photographer and
lecturer. All these qualities coalesced in his support for the John
Muir Trust, founded in 1983.

Butterfield's was the fifth name on the membership list, and he served
as a director on its board and donated royalties for his 1999 follow-
up to Highland Britain, the Magic of the
Munros, to help fund the trust's purchase of the mountain
Schiehallion. Butterfield could see the value of a voice for Britain's
wild lands, and the trust he worked so hard for has become their most
coherent champion.

Latterly, he helped set up the Munro Society, and campaigned as part
of the Perthshire Alliance for the Real Cairngorms to have the
boundary of the new Cairngorms National Park
extended to include wild land in Perthshire, left out for reasons of
political expediency.

After so much hard work, commitment and generosity, Butterfield became
an honorary member of many organisations, but his attitude remained
that of an outsider. His books
helped inspire a huge increase in the number climbing Munros, and,
unfortunately, also in the damage that increase caused. But very few
have equalled his commitment to Scotland's wild places.


He is survived by his partner, Moira Gillespie, and his sister Irene.


Irvine Butterfield, hill walker, photographer, writer and
conservationist, born 8 August 1936; died 12 May 2009

.

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