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:
“Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)