Joining a club is a great way to make friends. It’s better together to team-up and find walking or climbing partners to safely share outdoor adventures together.
Arising from the great age of mountain and rock exploration in the late 19th/early 20th Century and expanded greatly through post-war post-industrial development of outdoor mountain recreation, there are now more than 450 mountaineering clubs across the United Kingdom. Some are local, some are regional or national. Most clubs are broad spectrum, having members with interests across all kinds of different mountain sports. A few clubs lean more towards one mountain discipline more than another. There are clubs specifically for women, and clubs catering to diverse individual and collective identities. All arrange programmes of activities (events) for members and can help members to develop their personal mountain skills of all disciplines.
Many clubs have their own accommodation huts in popular mountain areas that can be used year round quite cheaply by members; and there are often reciprocal rights for members to use the huts of other clubs. And then there’s the social rewards.
The websites of both the British Mountaineering Council (club finder) and Mountaineering Scotland have ‘find a club’ pages that can help anyone looking for a club. Clubs are generally welcoming. They want new members, and often offer free trial memberships for a few months so that people can discover what it’s like and whether a particular club meets their needs. It’s not uncommon to find people belonging to multiple clubs.
Quite simply, being a member of a club is very good fun. We’re better together.
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