Our club

The CMC had its first meet on the August Bank Holiday of 1970 in North Wales. If you read back through the club journals from those early years, you’ll find stories of some pretty impressive climbing across the UK and the Alps — and some equally impressive silliness.

Fast forward to present day and there’s still plenty of foolery (see our Instagram). But we’ve also widened our interests. The club is now full not just of climbers and mountaineers but also hikers, wild campers and adventurers of all experience levels and abilities. If you’re looking for a group of people to get away to the hills with, you won’t find a better bunch. At least not in South London.

For a bit more club history, take a look through our early journals, which we’ve digitised and added to our archives (see our Members’ Area). There were even early ascents of the Bonatti Pillar and plenty of other epic stuff the likes of which most current members couldn’t even dream of.

Nowadays there’s a lot more mountain walking and scrambling, but also winter and summer climbing, plus plenty of local day walks and bike rides to keep us all active between our weekend hut and camping meets.