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 burly 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
