Now more accessible than ever! Thanks to a grant from the Colorado Historical Records Advisory Board, we were able to process and digitize a portion of the Colorado Mountain Club Archives.

Located in the American Mountaineering Center, the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) Archives are maintained by the staff of the American Alpine Club (AAC) Library. From April 2017 to May 2018, with a dedicated group of enthusiastic CMC & AAC volunteers, we organized, inventoried, rehoused, and digitized much of this collection. The most painful part was organizing the huge duplicate collection of Trail & Timberline back issues and flattening summit registers. Interested in purchasing back issues of the T&T? Contact us at library@americanalpineclub.org. Proceeds will go towards archives maintenance.

What's in the Colorado Mountain Club Archives?

The archives date back to before the founding of the Colorado Mountain Club in 1912. There are trip reports, photographs, lantern slides, scrapbooks, old gear, 'Save the Wildflowers' posters, and much more. Currently, most of the early trip reports (over 1,150) have been digitized and eight photo scrapbooks. We are gradually adding them to our Digital Collections website. As we create and catalog finding aids, you can find them in our catalog here.

Putting It All Together

Having all of these records inventoried and cataloged makes it so much easier for researchers to find information. For example, you can now find photographs from the 1915 Clear Creek Outing on our Digital Collections website, with a selection seen below.

Clear Creek Outing, Aug. 9-21, 1915

Top: Camp at Clear Creek, Bottom: Mess Tent

Top right: Brook’s Tent, Bottom: Men’s Washroom

Field Day

Top: Base-ball, Bottom: Women’s tug-of-war

Top: Off to Gray’s & Torreys, Bottom: Preparing supper at temporary camp below Steven’s Mine

Left: Torrey’s Peak from Grizzly Gulch, Right: Summit of Kelso

Left: Gray’s and Torrey’s, Top right: Summit of Gray’s, and Bottom right: Torrey’s from Kelso

Gray’s from Edwards (left) and Torrey’s (right)

By searching the inventories, you can pair those photographs with the Song Book written by the Club members, the Grays and Torreys trip report and the summit registers that were signed by the CMCers when they climbed Grays and Torreys on August 20, 1915.

It's a Long Way to Gray's and Torreys

This is a song written by a CMC member and was likely sung as they slogged up Grays and Torreys Peaks on August 20th 1915. Perhaps it was set to the music of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”

Grays Peak Summit Register

Cover page, placed by Outing party on August 20, 1915.

Grays Peak page 2

Lots of people summited Grays on August 20th 1915.

Grays Peak page 3

This is the third page of the 1915 summit register. You can see there were quite a few people climbing it on August 20, 1915. The same number probably summit it today in an hour.

Trip Report - Page 1

Trip Report - Page 2

Trip Report - Page 3

Trip Report - Page 4

There are many more great records. Feel free to drop by the library and take a look. Keep an eye on our Digital Collections website as we are constantly adding more photographs and records.

This project was supported in part by an award from the Colorado Historical Records Advisory Board, through funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), National Archives Records Administration. This project would not have been possible without the volunteers that inventoried, sorted, boxed, re-foldered, and scanned. Many thanks to Donna Anderson, Karyn Bocko, Dan Cohen, RoseMary Glista, Ann Hudgins, Peter Hunkar, Mike Lovette, Jan Martel, Barbara Munson, Roxy Rogers De Sole, Linda Rogers, Lin Wareham-Morris and Pat Yingst.