Cameron was brought up in the Glasgow area and did much of his early walking as a youth in the Campsie Fells. As confidence grew he moved further afield to bigger mountains and his first Munro was Ben Lomond. For a number of years McNeish worked for the Scottish Youth Hostels Association as a warden and for a period ran the busy hostel at Aviemore, in his early years he also worked as a ski and climbing instrucor. 1978 saw the publication of his first book, “Highland Ways” which was about backpacking in Scotland. In 1982 he started a weekly outdoor column in his local newspaper the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald called “McNeish at Large” and in the same year co-founded the outdoor magazine Footloose with two colleagues.

In 1985 he become editor of Climber and Rambler magazine, leaving in 1991 to become editor of TGO Magazine [1] (formerly The Great Outdoors), a position he still holds today. In 1999 he became outdoor correspondent of the Sunday Herald writing the weekly Peak Practice column. Throughout the late 1980s, McNeish contributed and wrote regularly for outdoor programmes on BBC Radio Scotland, in 1991 he scripted and hosted The Munro Challenge for BBC Radio 4 to celebrate 100 years of the Munro Tables. During this time Cameron was still writing books and the immensely popular The Munros Almanac and The Munros: Scotland’s Highest Mountains were released in the 1990s.

In 1994 McNeish moved into television, presenting the BAFTA-winning The Edge: One Hundred Years of Scottish Mountaineering and in the same year The Great Outdoors, a six part series for Channel 4. His best known television work is the Wilderness Walks programmes that he made for BBC Two: the first series was broadcast in 1997 and the second in 1998. McNeish was a consultant and guest on the 2007 series Mountain. In the first programme he guides series presenter Griff Rhys Jones to the summit of Scotland's most northerly Munro, Ben Hope, in a snowstorm. He is also a regular contributor to the BBC Scotland series, The Adventure Show. After a break of a number of years from book writing, McNeish released "The Sutherland Trail: A Journey Through Scotland's North-west" in August 2009 in conjunction with award-winning photographer and film maker Richard Else. The book is a description of a week-long walking route through Sutherland, in the far north-west of Scotland.

McNeish is opposed to the spread of wind farm in wilderness areas, with reasons for his opinions including the energy payback of turbines: "the environmental costs in creating the turbines, transporting the infrastructure, etc is far greater than any carbon gas savings" [2]. However when putting forward such views McNeish has not cited any sources for their basis. Further, research papers published in independent, peer-reviewed scientific journals are in disagreement: for a 2MW turbine operating for 20 years "the energy use is paid back in 0.40 year [146 days], or 2% of a 20 year lifetime" (Martinez et al., 2009, Renewable Energy, Volume 34) and, for a 3MW turbine operating for 20 years "the life cycle energy requirements were shown to be offset by the energy produced within the first 12 months of operation" (Crawford, 2009, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 13). McNeish is also opposed to the development of turbines because their use means "Scottish tourism and the Scottish landscape are being sacrificed" [3]. This view is opposed by tourists asked in a survey conducted by MORI Scotland [4] which found 8% of 307 visitors felt they had a negative effect on the impressions of their holiday destination while 43% viewed them as a positive influence. The same survey found 91% of tourists would not be put off visiting an area due to the presence of a wind farm, 2% would be, while 4% would be more likely to visit due to the presence of turbines.

McNeish has also criticised policy in the area of alternative energy area believing it to be a "one-horse renewables programme that pushes large-scale wind farms to the virtual exclusion of other sources, such as tidal power and biomass" [5]. However official government figures from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics [6] state that in 2008 biomass sources generated 9,315GWh of renewable electricity whereas wind power, both on and offshore generated 7,097GWh, or 24% less. With respect to tidal power since he aired these views leases for 600MW of tidal projects in the Pentland Firth have been awarded [7] and tidal energy has been reclassified as an "emerging technology" allowing it to gain twice the level of financial support compared to onshore wind [8] under the Renewables Obligation, the primary monetary support tool for the development of such technologies in the UK.

Cameron McNeish has travelled in many of the remote places in the world having hiked, backpacked, skied and climbed in the Alps, the Pyrenees, Spain, Iceland, North America, Norway, Sweden, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Central America, Slovenia, Russia, Guatemala, Corsica, Jordan and Turkey. Despite this most of his walking is done in the Scottish Highlands collecting data for his newspaper columns and creating podcasts for his personal website. Cameron completed his first round of the Scottish Munros in 1991 becoming Munroist no. 913, he completed his second round in 1996.

Cameron McNeish is president of the Backpackers club, vice president of the Ramblers' Association in Scotland, chairman of the Nevis Partnership and a trustee of the Wilderness Foundation. He lives in Newtonmore with his wife.