American Alpine Club
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| Motto | To support our shared passion for climbing and respect for the places we climb. |
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| Formation | 1902 |
| Headquarters | Golden, CO, USA |
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Exec. Dir.
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Phil Powers (climber) |
| Website | americanalpineclub.org |
The American Alpine Club (AAC) is a non-profit member organization whose goal is "a united community of competent climbers and healthy climbing landscapes." The Club is housed in the American Mountaineering Center (AMC) in Golden, Colorado.
Through its members, the AAC advocates for American climbers domestically and around the world; provides grants and volunteer opportunities to protect and conserve climbing areas; hosts local and national climbing festivals and events; cares for the nation’s leading climbing library and mountaineering museum; manages the Hueco Rock Ranch, New River Gorge Campground, and Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch as part of a larger lodging network for climbers; and annually gives about $100,000 toward climbing, conservation, and research grants that fund adventurers who travel the world. It also maintains regional sections—with both regional staff and volunteers—throughout the United States.
The AAC publishes two journals, The American Alpine Journal (AAJ) and Accidents in North American Mountaineering (Accidents), and a Guidebook to Membership annually. Collections of these journals, along with tens of thousands of other climbing-related publications and mountaineering literature, can be found in the Henry S. Hall, Jr. American Alpine Club Library, also located in the AMC. The AAC is a 501(c)3 organization supported by gifts and grants from individuals, corporations and foundations, member dues, and income from lodging, publications and restricted endowments.
Founded by Arctic zoologist and geographer Angelo Heilprin, the American Alpine Club was established in 1902 and had 45 founding members. These original members were primarily from the East Coast, although a handful resided in the Midwest, Washington, and Alaska. Among them was Annie Smith Peck and the AAC's first president, Charles Ernest Fay, who also a founding member of the Appalachian Mountain Club.
The Club was primarily East Coast-oriented for the first half-century of its existence; its headquarters remained in New York until 1993, when the Board unanimously decided to move the AAC to its current location in Golden, Colorado. The Club is housed in the American Mountaineering Center, whose other tenants include the Colorado Mountain Club and Outward Bound.
The AAC is historically and contemporarily associated with a number of other American and International organizations. It was a founding member of the Union International des Associations d’Alpinism (UIAA) in 1930 and the Arctic Institute of North America in 1948.
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