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
 

Exhibitions

The Club is pleased to be able to use its premises and resources, along with its renowned archive of mountaineering reports, books, art and artefacts to host and curate exhibitions that celebrate mountain history and culture. As well as spotlighting the work of contemporary artists and academics, the Club has also worked to mark key mountaineering anniversaries; bringing together records of the past to keep our history alive and engaging for climbers and the wider community alike.

Individual exhibitions may vary, but most take place at our Charlotte Road Club House.

A full list of past and upcoming exhibitions is shown below.

London Exhibition: Robin Collomb - A Retrospective - 10 Nov to 19 Dec 2015

 

An exhibition of works by Robin Collomb (8th April 1930 - 18th January 2015) will open with a Private View for Members and friends on Tuesday, 10th November at  6.30pm. This exhibition is curated with the participation and collaboration of his widow, Pam (Member AC) and his daughters Nicole, Stephanie and Michele.  It will be followed by a lecture at 7.30pm by Julian Freeman-Attwood on the Great Mongolian Rescue. The exhibition will run until 19th December.

Robin was well-known as a publisher and the proprietor of West Col. For many years he published the AJ and our AC Guidebooks. He was exceptionally well qualified for AC membership but refused to join to avoid any conflict of interest. To many people at the time, who only knew his name, he was a somewhat controversial figure because he actually made money from guidebooks!  

Almost everything Robin did, waking and sleeping throughout his life, had something to do with mountains. Few people knew that, years before, he studied at Central St Martins and was a considerable mountain artist, both in oils,  pen and ink drawing and other media.
 
He has left a stack of good and interesting material so this will be an fascinating and intriguing exhibition of works by a man whom many knew of, but few of us knew in person. 
Read more: London Exhibition: Robin Collomb - A Retrospective - 10 Nov to 19 Dec 2015

London Exhibition: Janet Johnson - Encounters with Rock Snow and Ice - 22 Sep to 27 Oct 2015

 

Janet Johnson is an associate member as an artist since 2010, creating distillations of her journeys through the Alps on foot and on ski, in the mediums of watercolour, and oil paint. Her first exhibition at the club celebrated a familiar iconic journey, the Haute Route.

This second exhibition five years later focuses on further encounters with rock ,snow and ice in alpine terrain in Europe and Norway. There will be first encounters with climbing modest 4000 metre peaks inspired by being a member of the club, for an artist who is essentially a skier. Janet grew up in Pennsylvania in the USA where she was skiing down a small hill in her backyard by the age of five. Along side this short exhibit at the Alpine Club Janet will be exhibiting over a year, a group of watercolours titled, Arolla Sublime, at the Grand Hotel & Kurhaus in Arolla Switzerland opening in August 2015 and running to August 2016.

Read more: London Exhibition: Janet Johnson - Encounters with Rock Snow and Ice - 22 Sep to 27 Oct 2015

Exhibition in Chamonix: 19th Century Alpine Club Artists

 

“The Treasures” of the Alpine Club will be on display in the Alpine Museum in Chamonix from 29th June 2015 to 17th April 2016.

The exhibition is part of the Celebration of the Golden Age of Alpinism. The year 1865 marked the climax of the Golden Age of Alpinism, immortalised by an impressive number of first ascents on magnificent summits, and new routes across the Alps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Austria.

Read more: Exhibition in Chamonix: 19th Century Alpine Club Artists