Final ascent of mountaineering legend Hamish MacInnes
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Legendary Scottish mountaineer and inventor Hamish MacInnes will today make one last emotional journey through the village he loved.
His funeral is to take place in Glasgow – but his hearse will make a short stop at his beloved Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team centre.
Dr MacInnes founded the team and lived in the Highland village where he died on Sunday from cancer, aged 90.
The funeral at Glasgow Crematorium will be in private at his own request, said the funeral directors.
As well as the rescue centre, the hearse will pass through the village at about 10.30am and stop briefly for a "short time of reflection" at his own home, Tigh-A-Voulin.
Donations can be made to the MacInnes Alpine Trust or through the funeral directors Manson and Macbeath.
Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team Leader, Andy Nelson, said that Dr MacInnes was a "fighter to the end".
"He had quite a struggle against illness recently, but he was a fighter until the end and died peacefully surrounded by friends," said Mr Nelson, who knew Dr MacInnes for over 30 years.
"He was a really tenacious guy and it is the end of an era. How do you mark the passing of Glencoe's most famous son?
"He made mountaineering safer without taking the adventure out of it.
"Hamish was very sharp and erudite but with a good level of mischief. He was known as the fox of Glencoe because of his cunning but I think he was should have been known as the cat of Glencoe, because he had more lives than a cat - he avalanched more times than he could remember, was benighted (stuck on a climb overnight) and suffered illnesses from expeditions in jungles etc.
"But he kept fighting back and his uncomplaining manner is what I will remember most about him. He would just get on with it. We have lost a legend."
Dr MacInnes sold his former home in Glen Coe to disgraced TV presenter Jimmy Savile.
There have been calls to raze Allt-na-reigh cottage after police confirmed it was one of Savile’s bases as he roamed the country abusing hundreds of children.
Dr MacInnes, founder of the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, said in 2013: “I thought I knew Jimmy well, like most people in this area.
“But I’ve been left totally bemused by everything that’s been revealed.
“I suppose I wasn’t the only person to have been hoodwinked. There’s a long list of folk which includes Prince Charles.”
Outdoors expert Cameron McNeish has previously called for the house to be used as a museum in tribute to Hamish.
It was where he invented the MacInnes stretcher, which is used for rescues worldwide.
At the cottage, Dr MacInnes also designed the first all-metal ice axe. But he felt it would be better used as a place for climbers to stay.
Dr MacInnes, who was born in Gatehouse of Fleet and based himself in Glen Coe, climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps when he was just 16.
He went on to found mountain rescue teams and write books on mountaineering.
Dr MacInnes is credited with inventing climbing's first all-metal ice axe and a rescue stretcher.
In the 1970s, he was an adviser on Clint Eastwood's film The Eiger Sanction and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and also The Mission starring Robert De Niro in the 1980s. He also worked with Sir Sean Connery.
He was also involved in the Search and Rescue Dog Association and the setting up of the Scottish Avalanche Information Service.
Dr MacInnes took part in more than 20 climbing expeditions abroad, including four to Mount Everest, and was almost killed in an avalanche on the peak in 1975.
In 2008, he was the first recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture, and was an explorer and a prolific inventor, building a car from scratch when he was 17.
Friend, actor Sir Michael Palin, told BBC Scotland Dr MacInnes saw life as something "to grab with both hands".
