Bill MacKenzie

Mountaineer in the 1930s renaissance of Scottish climbing

William MacHattie MacKenzie, business consultant, climber and skier: born Relugas, Morayshire 10 November 1908; married (one son, one daughter); died Prestwick, Ayrshire 12 February 2003.

The Scottish Mountaineering Club's hut on Ben Nevis, mid-October 1937: rain is beating against the hut window as the quartet of MacKenzie, Murray, Dunn and MacAlpine consider what route to climb. "When the weather is foul," begins Bill MacKenzie, "and the rain is coming down in sheets, there is only one thing to do."

W.H. ("Bill") Murray, who recorded the scene in his classic Mountaineering in Scotland (1947), thought the answer was to go back to bed. But MacKenzie was indignant. "The only thing to do is climb the hardest route on the mountain." And why? "In rain, you get miserable on an easy climb. But, go to a hard route, you forget the weather – all your interest goes to the rock."

MacKenzie and Murray did Slav Route (420m), fingers numb and nailed boots scratching for friction on dripping slabs. At the time it was the best summer route on the mountain and is now graded "severe". Kenneth Dunn and Archie MacAlpine took an easier route that day.

MacKenzie was pigeonholed as "the chap who climbed with Bill Murray" whereas in fact it would be fairer to reverse the roles. Murray's name gained pre-eminence because it was he who wrote the colourful account of 1930s climbing in Scotland that became an inspirational text to the post-war generation of mountaineers.

Not that Murray played down the part of his friend. MacKenzie, he said, had no rival in Britain for climbing high-angled ice and that mix of rock, snow and ice that is the magic brew of Scottish winters. He was also one of the most able performers on summer rock.

"Wiry and lean as a courtyard cat", MacKenzie led many of the hardest pitches as he and his friends in the Glasgow section of the Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland brought about a 1930s renaissance in Scottish climbing, moving out of the gullies on to open, committing faces and buttresses, using a modified slater's hammer to cut steps in ice and head torches to cope with Scotland's dearth of winter daylight.

Perhaps MacKenzie's finest winter legacy is Shelf Route on Buachaille Etive Mor, the mountain that rises in irresistible challenge at the head of Glencoe. Hard and frighteningly exposed, the 165m route was years ahead of its time and still gets a maximum three-star quality rating in guidebooks. MacKenzie and Murray made the first winter ascent on 28 March 1937 – their second try – with Murray watching "almost sick with apprehension" at one crucial juncture, as MacKenzie, balancing with no handholds at all, deftly changed feet on an outward-sloping wrinkle.

Born in Morayshire in 1908, William MacHattie MacKenzie was educated at Elgin Academy and Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen, then worked for Union Bank of Scotland (later the Bank of Scotland) in Elgin and Nairn before transfers to Gourock and Glasgow. Retiring from the bank in 1968, he went into partnership with his wife Mary, forming a firm of accountants and business consultants in Glasgow.

Work and climbing were interrupted by Second World War service. In 1936, MacKenzie joined the Territorial Army and at the time of the Munich Crisis served briefly with French alpine troops based at Chamonix. Mobilised again in 1939, he was commissioned in the Border Regiment and sent to France, getting evacuated from Cherbourg two weeks after Dunkirk. For the remainder of the war he was attached to Special Forces, including spells in mountain warfare training units in Scotland, Ireland, at Banff in Canada and Kiska, Alaska. He left the Army in 1948 with the rank of major.

It was in the Canadian Rockies, at Banff, that he learned survival techniques, including snow-holing, that he was to try out back home on hapless companions. After one uncomfortable night on Ben Lawers, the Glasgow professor Robert Grieve emerged from an icy den to declare: "Bugger climbing, bugger snow-holing and bugger you, MacKenzie. I'm going home."

MacKenzie's early sporting interests were golf and football. He played for Elgin City and scooped Elgin Golf Club's coveted Bibby Cup before his 18th birthday. He took to skiing in the 1930s, and was for a time honorary secretary and treasurer of the Scottish Ski Club.

Mountains were his abiding passion. He produced a Climbing Guide to the Cuillin of Skye in 1958 and served the climbing fraternity in various voluntary offices, most importantly to him as President of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, 1966-68. Remarkably, he was still climbing in his seventies, skiing in his eighties and golfing and fishing in his nineties.

Stephen Goodwin