2024 AC London Dinner

The Club will be hosting a London dinner and lecture event for members on 16 February 2024 at The Army and Navy Club, London ("The Rag").

Alongside a three-course meal, the event will feature a talk by Honorary AC member George Lowe titled 'Reflections on a Life in the Mountains'.

George was the reipient of the 2023 Piolets d'Or Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his incredibly long and successful climbing career. As well as monumental contributions to North American climbing, George is perhaps best-known for his 1978 attempt on the north ridge of Latok I with Jim Donini, Michael Kennedy and Jeff Lowe.

For a further taste of George's life and climbing career, you can watch his American Alpine Club Legacy Series interview below.

The event will start at 18:30 with George's talk, followed by drinks (cash bar) and dinner.

AC Launches Continuing Mountaineering Development Sessions

The Club recognises the need for members to stay up to date with changing mountaineering techniques and updates to best practice. To make this information more accessible to our members, we are introducing Continuing Mountaineering Development workshops which will run on the first full day of the Summer Alpine Meet. For the 2024 meet, this will be 16 June.

These two-hour sessions, which will be delivered by guides, are free to attend and are open to both members and experienced guests who are joining for the meet.

Taking place at the campsite, the sessions, which will run from 10AM-12PM and 1PM-3PM, will cover specific information pertinent to the local area, a refresher on glacier travel/crevasse rescue, kit maintenance/replacement and will provide the opportunity for members to ask questions on topics of concern.

Registration will be sought in advance with the sign-up form to the Summer Alpine Meet in order to gauge interest and numbers.

Thalay Sagar Expedition Film

In May 2023, Keith Ball, Mike Pescod and AC member Guy Buckingham travelled to the Garhwal Himalaya for an attempt on the unclimbed south-east ridge of Thalay Sagar (6805m). The expedition was supported by both the Alpine Club Climbing Fund and the Mount Everest Foundation.

Mountain Equipment have now released a short film of their expedition which you can watch below.

Kapadia Interviews Go Online

Alpine Club member and Editor of the Himalayan Journal Harish Kapadia has, over a period of nearly two decades, conducted interviews with many notable figures from the world of mountaineering. In 2023, Kapadia formally made a gift of these recordings to the Alpine Club Library.

From December 2023 onwards, we will be releasing these interviews once a week via our YouTube channel so that they can be enjoyed by mountain-enthusiasts throughout the world. Episodes will release on Thursday mornings UK time. If you subscribe to the channel, you will receive a notification when new episodes go live.

The first episode, an interview with Sir Chris Bonington conducted in March 2008, is now online and can be watched below. In the recording, Sir Chris discusses his personal journey into climbing, his 1970 expedition to the south face of Annapurna, the evolution in Himalayan style from siege to alpine and his experience of managing mountaineering teams in a leadership role.

 The Alpine Club Library holds a wealth of mountaineering material to which we are very pleased to add these recordings.