Appalachian Mountain Club. Much executive and staff planning work has been done during the past year toward meeting the great demands being placed on the public service facilities and services of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Our membership reached a new high of 8,231 persons at the end of 1962. This growth has also been felt in the varied year-round activities and facilities of the Club, but the most spectacular increase has been in the public use of the unique A.M.C. hut system in the White Mountains. Here we have experienced a 50% increase in overnight use in the last two years. The pressure on these facilities has been so great that two of the current units have been or will soon be rebuilt or replaced, and extensive improvements have been made in others. Plans are now underway for the erection of two new huts and the complete renovation of the year-round base camp in Pinkham Notch.

Three training sessions for climbing leaders were sponsored during the year and the four-day June workshop for summer leaders and counsellors once again has been the best attended. For the second successive summer A.M.C. rock climbers and staff conducted a one-day outdoor demonstration and exhibition for the public on Eagle Cliff in the shadow of the Old Man of the Mountains in Franconia Notch, N.H. The two shows sponsored jointly with the N.H. State Recreation Division were viewed by several thousand persons. The Club’s western four-week trip to the Tetons conducted by the August Camp Committee was marred by the tragic death of one of the climbing leaders, Stephen Smith, on the stormbound Grand Teton in late July. As usual, A.M.C. members were actively climbing in small groups on several continents, and our semi-annual journal, Appalachia, has contained the record of many of these ascents.

C. F. Belcher, Executive Director