Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
- Alpine Club
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The Alpine Club, also known as the London Alpine Club, was founded in London in 1857 and is the world's first mountaineering club. The primary focus of the club is to support mountaineers who climb in the Alps and the "Greater Ranges of the world's mountains". The Alpine Club was founded on December 22, 1857 by a group of British mountaineers at Ashley's Hotel in London. The original founders were active mountaineers in the Alps and instrumental in the development of alpine mountaineering during the Golden Age of Alpinism (1854–1865). E. S. Kennedy was the first chairman of the Alpine Club but the naturalist, John Ball, was the first president. Kennedy, also the first vice-president, succeeded him as president of the club from 1860 to 1863. In 1863, the club moved its headquarters to the Metropole Hotel in London. The Alpine Club is specifically known for having developed early mountaineering-specific gear including a new type of rope. The goal was to engineer a strong and light rope that could be carried easily. A committee of the club tested samples from suppliers and prepared a specification in the early 1900s. The official Alpine Club Rope was then made by John Buckingham of Bloomsbury. It was made from three strands of manila hemp, treated to be rot proof and marked with a red thread of worsted yarn. For many years, the Alpine Club had the characteristics of a London-based Gentlemen's club, including a certain imprecision in the qualification for membership (said to have been 'a reasonable number of respectable peaks'). Until 1974, the club was strictly for men only, but in 1975, within months of membership being opened to women, a merger with the Ladies' Alpine Club was agreed, and the Club thus gained about 150 new members. By the last quarter of the 20th century, the club had evolved into Britain'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. However, it still requires prospective members to be proposed and seconded by existing members. The club's history has 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. Though the club organizes some UK-based meets and indoor lectures, its primary focus has tended towards mountaineering overseas. The club has produced a suite of guidebooks that cover some of the more popular Alpine mountaineering regions. It also holds extensive book and photo libraries as well as an archive of historical artefacts which are regularly lent out to exhibitions. Its members' activities are recounted annually in the club's publication, the Alpine Journal, the world's oldest mountaineering journal, and interim newsletters are produced during the year. The club continues to encourage and sponsor mountaineering expeditions through its membership and it maintains an online "Himalayan Index" of articles about Himalayan mountaineering activities recorded in journals, magazines and books in its library.
Places
London, England
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Alpine club
Mountaineering club
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
RAD, July 2008 version. Canadian Council of Archives.
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Catalogued April 2023.