The first Alpine Club, founded in London in 1857, was once described as:
- a club of English gentlemen devoted to mountaineering, first of all in the Alps, members of which have successfully addressed themselves to attempts of the kind on loftier mountains. (The Nuttall Encyclopaedia 1907)
Today, Alpine clubs stage climbing competitions, operate alpine huts and paths, and are active in protecting the Alpine environment. The oldest is the UK Alpine Club, originally founded as a gentlemen's club (see List of London's gentlemen's clubs). With around 815,000 members the German Alpine Club is the largest Alpine club in the world.
Read more about Alpine Club: List of Alpine Clubs
Famous quotes containing the words alpine and/or club:
“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.”
—Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)