DOCTOR Hamish MacInnes was a legendary Scottish mountain climber, inventor, and author who was described as “the father of modern mountain rescue in Scotland”.
The world-renowned mountaineer is best known for inventing the MacInnes stretcher, which is still used internationally by mountain rescue teams worldwide.
Born in Dumfries and Galloway in 1930 he developed a reputation as a top climber for scaling some of the world's most dangerous peaks.
He climbed the Matterhorn, regarded as one of the most difficult mountains to climb in the world, at just 16 years old.
He also scaled the Bonatti Pillar on the Aiguille du Dru, a mountain on the Mont Blanc massif of the French Alps, while suffering from a fractured skull after being hit by a falling rock.
Dr MacInnes earned the nickname “Fox of Glencoe” referencing his cunning as a mountaineer as he lived in the area at the Allt-na-Reigh cottage from 1961 to 1987.
The white stone cottage was once previously owned by paedophile TV presenter Jimmy Savile.
The disgraced broadcaster owned the cottage from 1998 until he died in 2011.
Allt-na-Reigh cottage has been covered in graffiti in recent years and has now been approved to be demolished.
A new building is to be redeveloped in its place with the outbuildings to be named the Hamish House in honour of Dr MacInnes.
The legendary mountaineer was also instrumental in establishing the Glencoe Mountain Rescue team, serving as its leader for 30 years, and the redevelopment is to pay tribute to his legacy.
Recognised widely as the father of modern mountain rescue in Scotland, it was in the Glencoe cottage where MacInnes invented the world’s first metal-shafted ice axe and the early versions of the MacInnes stretcher.
Not only was he an inventor he founded the Search and Rescue Dog Association and set up the Scottish Avalanche Information Service.
He also wrote the International Mountain Rescue Handbook, first published in 1972 and still used as a manual today.
In addition to the manual Dr MacInnes wrote a further 21 books on mountaineering.
He was also hired as an on-set adviser on Hollywood films like Robert De Niro's The Mission and Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction.
In 2008, he was the first recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture and received an OBE for services to mountaineering and mountain rescue in Scotland in 1979.
Later in life, Dr MacInnes battled ill-health.
He experienced delirium, caused by an acute urinary infection, which was misdiagnosed as dementia.
MacInnes died at his home in Glencoe on November 22, 2020, at the age of 90.
Friend and actor Michael Palin told BBC Scotland when MacInnes died that he saw life as something "to grab with both hands".
Palin met MacInnes while filming in Glencoe for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
He said: “He had a great sense of humour and was wonderfully eccentric, which was just what we wanted, and he helped us on the film.”
