The Alpine Club, the world’s first mountaineering club, was founded in 1857.  For over 150 years, members have been at the leading edge of worldwide mountaineering development and exploration. 

With membership, experienced and aspiring alpinists benefit from a varied meets programme, regional lectures with notable guest speakers, reduced rates at many alpine huts, opportunity to apply for grants to support expeditions, significant discounts at many UK retailers, extensive networking contacts, access to the AC Library and maps - and more! 

Becoming a Member
 

The club is looking to extend its programme of meets, which offer great opportunities for members to get to know each other by climbing, walking or mountaineering, both within the UK, and overseas.  

As well as the flagship Alpine Club summer meet, and regular winter climbing meets, not to mention the programme of Aspirant meets at home and in the Alps, the club is adding new venues each year, as members come forward to offer suggestions.

Often the impetus behind organising a meet might be sparked from a desire to share your passion for a particular area with a group of keen and motivated members.  New ideas for next year include trips to the Californian Deserts and the Sandstone of the Orkney Islands and winter meets in the Tatra Mountains and Ala-Archa, Kyrgyzstan. Often a casual suggestion has led to a whole series of annual meets, as was the case with the very popular Anti Atlas meet.

The club is particularly interested in fostering ties with foreign clubs and there is a lively annual meet with climbers from the Marseille section of the French Alpine Club.  The recent Transylvania exchange with a group of Romanian climbers was also a great success, and new ties are being forged in areas frequented by Russian climbers.  It is hoped that we continue to encourage this kind of exchange and develop the Alpine Club’s international ties.  Ideas are most welcome!

The club has many more UK meets now, from Skye to Swanage, and these are proving popular and very easy to organise – especially camping meets. The process is simple: choose your area, the number of members you would like to attend and write a rough outline of what activities you have in mind, then submit this to the AC Meets Officer, preferably with the offer to act as the Meet Coordinator.  If approved, the subsequent organisation can be very simple – depending on the goals!  As a Meet Coordinator, once you have submitted a report for the AC newsletter, you can claim expenses as follows: Mini meets - £25; UK weekend meets - £75; UK week-long meet - £125; Europe and North Africa meets - £250; non-European Meets - £300; Open expeditions - £500.

Please submit any ideas, however ambitious or otherwise to Chair of the Climbing Sub-Committee Nicholas Smith (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), who can provide full details on how to organise a meet.