The Colorado Mountain Club. The CMC continued its emphasis on large numbers of hikes in the Colorado area, with over 2,000 trips offered during the year. In addition, a number of outings were sponsored to other parts of the world, including trips to Nepal, Yellowstone Park, England, and Scotland. We continue to offer training courses in a variety of areas, such as wilderness trekking, basic mountaineering, high altitude mountaineering, avalanche awareness, wilderness survival, ice climbing, intermediate rock climbing, and winter camping.

The CMC is jointly renovating a school with the AAC, with the completed building to house the headquarters of both organizations. The renovation began in September, 1996, and is scheduled for completion in 1998. The two organizations have raised more than $3,000,000 for this project, with roughly $1,000,000 more to be collected to complete it. A number of Colorado and national foundations have supplied funds for the work.

The club also installed an automated trip sign-up system this year. Members can now call the clubhouse 24 hours a day to sign up for trips, using a trip number in their trip schedules and their member numbers. This has greatly reduced the burden on the staff while improving the response time for members.

The club has also entered into a book reselling agreement with the Seattle Mountaineers, whereby that organization advertises selected publications in the CMC magazine, Trail & Timberline, ships its books directly to the CMC members, and gives the CMC a percentage of the proceeds, which is used for its operating budget. We hope that there will be more cooperative agreements of this type among the nation’s mountaineering organizations in the future.

Steve Bragg, Outgoing President