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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From 2021 onwards, the Alpine Club will be marking the centenary of the three 1920s Everest expeditions with a series of exhibitions, talks, films and other media. All of the news regarding these activities will be posted here in one, easy to follow, feed.
The video of Stephen Venables's lecture; 'Everest - East Side Story,' given at the opening of the 2021 Everest Centenary Exhibition is now available to watch in full via the Alpine Club's YouTube channel or by clicking on the player below.
Following the end of its run, the accompanying catalogue for our exhibition 'Everest by Those Who Were There - 1921, 1922, 1924' is now available to view online via our Publications Page.
Written by the Alpine Club's Honorary Librarian Barbara Grigor-Taylor and with a foreward by mountaineering writer Peter Gillman, the catalogue wonderfully captures both the depth of historical material and the many human stories that were so wonderfully explored by the exhibition.
Replete with high quality photographs from the expeditions themselves, along with art works and artefacts, the catalogue places these early expeditions in the context of the time, detailing everything from how the idea of climbing Everest first came to be, all the way up to the blow-by-blow movements of Mallory and Irvine on their fateful summit push.
We are pleased to be able to make it free to all online so that anyone who was unable to attend the exhibition can still engage with the material. Whether you are an Everest expert or entirely unfamiliar with this era of mountaineering, you will doubtless find it an absorbing and informative read.
A video tour of our current exhibition, 'Everest: by Those Who Were There' is now available to view on YouTube. Presented by club librarian Beth Hodgett, the tour explores the major events of the 1921, 1922 and 1924 Everest Exhibition using the artefacts and materials compiled for the exhibition by our Honorary Librarian Barbara Grigor-Taylor.
As the video was initially broadcast via Facebook live, it is filmed in a vertical aspect ratio and so is best viewed on mobile. We had some small issues with sound in the initial live broadcast, but these have now been rectified with a short subtitled section in this version.