Sir, - It is just 51 one years since the Irish Mountaineering Club (the first mountaineering club in this island) was founded and eight years since a very important historical milestone was passed when Dawson Stelfox made the first Irish ascent of Mount Everest. In the intervening 43 years many other milestones were passed on the path to that success.
These milestones deserve to be recorded; but there is much more in the history of Irish mountaineering than those 51 years. Almost a century before the IMC was founded, John Tyndall from Leighlin Bridge (better known as a scientist) nearly beat Edward Whymper to the summit of Matterhorn and Charles Barrington made the first ascent of the famed Eiger above Grindelwald.
The many notable events in Irish mountaineering in the century-and-a-half are almost or completely forgotten - hidden in journals or private papers - so the Mountaineering Council of Ireland has decided to sponsor a society to research this history. But as soon as we started to plan the society we remembered the many Irish explorers who are also forgotten or subsumed into British exploration history. Many will have heard of Shackleton and Tom Crean in the Antarctic, but men like Palliser from Waterford who explored the Canadian Rockies and the Irishmen who were key figures in the 19th century search for the North-West Passage are largely unknown.
The final decision was to try to form an Irish Mountaineering and Exploration History Society to research and publish information about Irish mountaineers and explorers, including those like H.C. Hart and R. L. Praeger who explored the hills of Ireland. An inaugural meeting will be held on Sunday, May 21st in Kilkenny to formally set up the Society. We invite anyone interested to contact the Acting Chairman, Kevin Higgins at the MCI Office, House of Sport, Longmile Road, Dublin 12; tel 01-4507376; fax 01-4502805; e-mail mci@eircom.net. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Higgins,
Joss Lynam,
Members,
MCI Executive,
Ardilea Estate,
Dublin 14.