Alpine Club (UK)

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The Alpine Club was founded in Great Britain in 1857 and was probably the world's first mountaineering club. It is UK mountaineering's acknowledged 'senior club'.

[edit] History

On 22 December 1857 a group of British mountaineers met at Ashley's Hotel in London. All were active in the alps and instrumental to the development of alpine mountaineering during the later half of the 19th century. It was at this meeting that the Alpine Club, under the chairmanship of Edward Kennedy, was born.

150 years later the Alpine Club continues, and its members remain extremely active in the alps and the greater ranges, as well as in mountain arts, literature and science.

For many years it had the characteristics of a London-based Gentleman's club, including a certain imprecision in the qualification for membership - (said to have been 'A reasonable number of respectable peaks').

By the mid 20th century however, the club had evolved into the UK's senior mountaineering club with a clear qualification for membership, for both men and women, and an 'aspirant' grade for those working towards full membership.

Though the club organises some UK-based meets, its primary focus has always tended towards mountaineering overseas, and it is associated more with exploratory mountaineering than with purely technical climbing. (The early club was once dismissed as doing very little climbing but 'a lot of walking steeply uphill'). These higher technical standards were often to be found in offshoots such as the 'Alpine Climbing Group', founded in 1952.

The club has produced a suite of guidebooks which cover some of the more popular Alpine mountaineering regions. It also holds extensive book and photo libraries as well as an archive of historical artifacts which are regularly loaned out to exhibitions. The club's history has recently been documented by George Band in his book Summit: 150 Years of the Alpine Club, and its artists in The Artists of the Alpine Club by Peter Mallalieu. Its members' activities are recounted annually in the club's publication The Alpine Journal.