Alaska Alpine Club. The flag of the Alaska Alpine Club was carried by the C4M4 Mount McKinley Expedition on its successful Karstens Ridge venture in early summer. Unfortunately one member, who did not reach the top, developed cerebral edema on the upper Harper Glacier and was rescued through combined efforts of the members of his team, the Alaska Alpine Club, and the Air Rescue Group from Elmendorf Air Force Base.

Besides climbing old standbys and making new routes on favorite peaks, several of our members made some new ascents. Mounts Gakona and Hajdukovich and “Double Exposure” in the Delta Mountains, Monument Peak in the Chugach Mountains, and “Tree Stump” in the White Mountains all fell to club members during the year. In August several members, tired of travelling the rivers of ice that constitute glaciers, made the second recorded descent of the Alsek River using one- and two-man kayaks. As the Alsek flows between Mount Fairweather and the Logan-St. Elias group, they saw much virgin ground for future climbs.

The club’s chief “open-to-the-masses” activity, the Glacier Stampede, was well on its way to becoming an annual event this past spring with its second annual occurrence drawing almost 200 people ranging in age from seven to 59 for an informal eight-mile ski-touring race to the club’s Canwell Glacier hut for an overnight stay in their own tents (74 of them) while the club provided a spaghetti dinner and a ham-and-egg breakfast for all. The spontaneous and irregularly held “Fly-by-Night Climbing School” of the past was organized officially last year into the Alaska Alpine Club Climbing School and is now entering its second year with 40 people registered for the course.

A third hut was built during the summer as an addition to the club’s hut system in the Delta Mountains of the eastern Alaska Range. It is a 12x12x12-foot “Gothic” A-frame structure similar to those built by the British Columbia Mountaineering Club.

Descent, the club’s newsletter and record of activities, is into its third year of publication. Organizations interested in receiving Descent on an exchange basis are encouraged to write the club, Box 5-960, College, Alaska 99701.

Douglas K. Bingham,.President