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! 

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Expeditions

The Alpine Club, the world's first mountaineering club, has members from around the world. Since it was founded in 1857, members have been at the leading edge of worldwide mountaineering development and exploration. We aim to be the club of choice for all mountaineers, providing a forum for sharing experiences and information.

Alpine Club members are constantly researching, organising and participating in expeditions to mountains around the world, so it will come as no surprise to find that amongst our members there is a massive wealth of knowledge about remote areas and expedition organisation. The Alpine Club provides a number of resources that will be useful for those planning or researching expeditions. This page provides links to these resources, and to other sites that are invaluable to expedition planners.

The Alpine Journal is a substantial annual record of mountaineering achievement, if you are planning an expedition it should be on your reading list.

Alpine Club Expeditions

The Alpine Club organises annual expeditions, which are often to remote and little-known mountain areas. These expeditions are open to all members, subject to qualifying criteria and numbers. They can be subsidised by the Montane Alpine Club Climbing Fund. This fund also supports expeditions privately organised by club members. .

Read more about Expedition Reports

The Himalayan Index is a key resource, it has been compiled from journals, magazines and books in the Alpine Club Library

Many expeditions will have been awarded Mount Everest Foundation grants and provided reports. There are some details on the MEF website but the MEF does not hold actual copies. These are distributed to the AC and the organisations listed below (but not the Kew archives).

Royal Geographical Society

The RGS holds copies of all MEF reports as well as many others. Searching is very straightforward and summaries are provided. Reports cover the period 1965 onwards and are very comprehensive. They can be consulted by visiting the RGS library, or copies can be e-mailed.

National Archives at Kew

Not the easiest source of information. The National Archives holds many older documents deposited there from multiple sources.

British Mountaineering Council

This is still in beta form but has some impressive features. It is easy to search although not comprehensive. It includes summaries, and you can download many complete reports as PDFs. The BMC is currently the only readily available source of this information.  The AC is working towards publishng a comprehenve expeditions database which will be be available on-line in due course.

Alan Rouse Sheffield Library

Sheffield library holds a comprehensive archive of mountaineering material, including copies of MEF and other expedition reports. There is a PDF catalogue which can be searched; one of the best ways of quickly identifying peaks and leaders. At present it is up to date only to 2010.

In late September myself and Nick Bullock headed out to Sichuan to attempt the first ascent of the south face of Minya Konka. Despite only having been climbed by the relatively straightforward north east and north west ridges, the mountain has a very dubious reputation for the number of people who have died while attempting it. 

We reached the road head at 3300m after two days of driving from Chengdu but the relatively straightforward one day approach to basecamp was hampered be a series of missing bridges, that had been lost in the monsoon. In the end we were forced to take the mules over a 5000m peak to get to BC at 4100m, on one of the toughest first days we had ever had. Also managed to lose the cook and liaison officer in the fog on the first day as well, very embarrassing!

Once at BC it proceeded to snow for the first three weeks, something the area is known for and something that seemed to occur throughout the Himalaya this year. In total we probably had two sunny days in a month and the summit constantly had a wind plume when visible. The worst thing was the almost constant fog at BC, which made life miserable for the cook and LO.

The heavy snowfall made acclimatization and reconnaissance of the route very arduous. It took three attempts to force a route through the ice fall to the foot of the route, something that was probably more hazardous than we were comfortable with. It collapsed significantly between our various attempts. 

The almost constant cloud cover meant that the snow that had fallen, did not stabilize and remained as powder even on south facing slopes. In the end we had to make the decision that, despite the slight improvement in the weather, that there was just too much snow on the route for a safe ascent this season. As we returned to base camp the temperature dropped considerably and the cook informed us that winter had come early! The high point of the trip was being surrounded by wolves.

Not the most fruitful trip I have been on but it was clear that the South Buttress is one of the best unclimbed lines in China. You need to just find the right route up the ice fall, get some descent weather and then climb the thing.