John Murray – mountaineer and author

Family, friends and colleagues laid John Murray to rest in Co Wicklow on a cold, wet, windy day in December.

Born in Ballinasloe in 1937 to Joe Murray and Frances of the large Dunshaughlin Delany family, schooled as Gaeilge in Ballinasloe, John started quantity surveying in Dublin.

John took to cycling and motor-biking in the Wicklow hills, where he met some young climbers who introduced him to the Irish Mountaineering Club and rock-climbing in Dalkey Quarry. There began a life-long love of mountaineering and many ascents in Ireland, Scotland, the Pyrenees and the Alps, including ascents of Mont Blanc, the Dom, Alphubel, Vajolet Towers in the Dolomites and eventually Nepal.

He married Patricia Hayes from Greystones, who joined him in hillwalking, Scottish winter climbing and cycling and who introduced him to skiing, which culminated in a family descent of the glacier in Les Deux Alpes as recently as April 2015. John undertook sailing, canoeing and scuba diving which enabled many excursions with family and friends in Ireland and farther afield, cycling around the major lakes, canoeing many rivers with Patricia and daughter Dervla, notably the beautiful river Suck, from its source in Lough O’Flynn, through Ballinasloe, to join the Shannon.

In the 1970s with colleagues in the IDA, John streamlined the tendering process and managed the contracts for building advanced industrial units which became the basis for attracting international investment, crucial to the provision of jobs in technology and pharmaceuticals. With IDA colleague Kieran O’Brien, Murray O’Brien & Partners was formed, undertaking many large projects nationally. John’s final quantity surveying job was preparing the scope of work on a project for his beloved daughter-in-law Holly, within weeks of his death.

In the late 1980s, a trust was formed in memory of Dermot Bouchier-Hayes, who died following a climbing accident in 1969. Using the funds gathered, John collaborated with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and a 1:25,000 map of Carrauntouhill and John's work, McGillycuddy's Reeks – A Hillwalker's Guide, were published together, referencing the old Irish placenames. The profits accrued to the DBH Trust benefited mountain rescue teams and a primary school in Saraswati in Nepal in Dermot's memory.

John’s son Fergal and daughter Clara reignited their dad’s love for motor biking on a Honda 250, which became the outdoor passion as advancing pulmonary fibrosis prevented him from walking his beloved mountains.

John was a man in whom co-existed to a high degree nobility of character, modesty, lucidity and goodness. In the mountains he was an informed and selfless leader on whom followers could totally depend, and with whom he shared his tremendous knowledge of flora and fauna, geology, photography and mountain navigation. His love of poetry, philosophy, literature, opera, etymology and history were inspiring, and his smile, kindness and impish sense of humour will be sadly missed.

John is survived by his wife Patricia, son Fergal, daughters Dervla and Clara, grandson Shane and his brother Joe in Ballinasloe.