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Home >> About Us
About Us
Martin Armitage on Oxford and Cambridge Direct, (MS) Grey Crag, Buttermere. Photo Al Phizacklea This image features on the cover of the latest FRCC guidebook
About us
We are an active club for mountaineers and rock climbers. Our main purpose is to encourage members in these pursuits by arranging meets and providing huts. We also involve ourselves in protecting the amenities of the Lake District and promoting the general interest of mountaineers.
Our activities are based mainly in the English Lake District but we have meets elsewhere in England, in Scotland and Wales, and also in Continental Europe including rock-climbing and Alpine meets. Members have a wide range of additional interests including skiing, fell-running and cycling. The majority of our members live in the Northern Counties of England but many are based elsewhere in England. We have a growing membership in Scotland.
Membership is open, on applicaton, to anyone participating in the sport on application regardless of sex, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion or other beliefs, subject to our joining procedures, described in joining.
We are a private club, registered as a Mutual Society, and have a membership limit of 1300. Currently we have about 1200 members, so we have room for new members. As our activities are centred on the English Lake District, an interest in and good knowledge of the Lake District’s fells is one of the basic requirements for membership. We are not a training organisation and therefore we expect all applicants to be experienced mountaineers. The Club numbers some of the leading UK climbers and mountaineers amongst our members and we hope to attract applications from young active climbers to continue our traditions of excellence.
We have huts in the Lake District and in Scotland and many of our meets are based in these huts. Other meets may be in Kindred Club huts, camping and occasionally hotels.
We have produced definitive rock-climbing guides to the Lake District since 1922 including, in 2003, the award-winning Lake District Rock (Selected Climbs) covering the whole of the Lakes. More recently we have introduced a Winter Climbs guide. The range of these guides has now been extended to cover St Bees Head, South Lakes Limestone and the Eden Valley.
In 1996 we published The Lakeland Fells which, apart from a wide range of useful information, gives routes up 244 of the Lake District’s fells along with maps and photos. This is also, in its way, a definitive guide.
We publish an e-newsletter for up-to-the-minute news and announcements. Our Chronicle is published quarterly to keep members up to date with the activities and projects of the club. Every two years the club produces the Journal which has extensive writings from the members on mountaineering subjects worldwide.
The club was founded in 1906 after a meeting at the Sun Inn in Coniston and our first President was the famous climber and mountain photographer Ashley Abraham. One of our most important early contributions to promoting the interest of mountaineers was to buy a large area of the Lake District above the 1,500 ft contour and present it to the National Trust. This was to ensure that it was freely available to all people for all time and was 30 years ahead of the formation of the Lake District National Park. This gift was made as a memorial to the club members who were killed in the First World War and is commemorated by a plaque on the summit of Great Gable and by our Act of Remembrance held there every November.
We have an Archive which includes many of the original Abrahams photos and a Library with an extensive selection of books on a wide range of mountaineering subjects.
We are Affiliated to and support the work of the BMC. Our members help with access issues in Cumbria, Northumberland and Yorkshire. We are represented at most of the BMC’s Area meetings.
Many of our members enjoy mountaineering in Scotland and we have huts and members there. Because of this, we have now become an Associate Member of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. This allows us support the MCofS and to be aware of developments in Scottish mountaineering.
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