Starting a climbing club?

I have only been climbing for about one year, mostly mountaineering and alpine with a little trad and sport up to 5.8. I am really in love with the sport but I have a lot of trouble finding people to go with since I go to college at a nerd school in Missouri. Our college used to have a climbing club way before I got here but it has since disolved. Does anyone have any advice on starting up an informal club? Anouther issue I was somewhat worried about was my relative inexperiance? But then I have the passion for it. I know if I look around hard enough I can probably find 10 guys or so that also climb, searching facebook, fliers... Advice ar experiance would be great!

Yeah find people with experience, and read and buy or checkout as many books as possible. do you have a climbig gym? or is there one anywhere near. Go there, or to the local crag if you have one.

I have had two courses through the American Alpine Institute in alpine mountaineering and technical leadership (24 days). My inexperience is in the more rock climbing-sport-trad above 5.6 ( the only type in MO), hoping though that someone else would join the club with experience there, then I could step in some if we wanted to take a trip to say Colorado or WA...
Looking into being a school affiliated group, well you have two have 15 active members and one year in existence plus professor sponsorship. So not so much expecting to be a official group. Also we are two hours from the nearest climbing gym, bummer. I basically want a group because I know from talking to a guy at the MU (large school about two hours from us) climbing club that there have been in the past guys come up there. So I was thinking that since my partner just moved back to CO that maybe more people here were in the same boat about not finding people here and that it would be great to have a group here and then meet up with MU every other weekend or so...

In informal climbing club would be a lot easier to start and maintain. Many people run them through internet sites like Meetup, but their is a fee of $50 every three months. You can do it through Google Groups for free. I was in one for years, still am actually, and would check it daily to see who wanted to climb in the group. We planned our road trips using the group as well. It was very rare to not find someone that wanted to climb on any given day.

As for the more official university route, at UT Austin it wasn't all that difficult to set up. You can get a meeting room out of it, which is the big benefit. In that case you have club officers. Just make sure your officers are students. We would submit our form with student member names each year and elect officers separately.

Good luck with the club! At the very least it gives you a reason to drink beer every meeting. I would suggest you meet once every other week on a good beer happy hour night. You'll plan bigger road trips that way.

Just maybe, it wouldn't be only '10 guys' who are interested. You could double your potential membership right there.

Anyone who is passionate about something will attract others. Passion is exciting and people want to be around it. That doesn't mean there won't be a lot of work as well, though.

Jesus, I sound like a f*&*n marriage counselor.

I personally think that an organized club is anathema to the spirit of climbing. On the other hand, the fellowship of fellow climbers socially is a benefit.

Since you are in Misery - err, Missouri; you're best bet is to informally organize road trips.

Far and away the easiest way to develop a "club" is to have a base area where you all can share a focus. Especially if it is somewhere that you all can mutually develop. Hunt for undiscovered stone, gradually increasing your radius. Most likely, if you do find somewhere, it'll be a bouldering spot. Don't let all the "pebble rasslin'" spray around here deter you, it comes from people who have access to ample vertical stone.

Great so I am excited that no one thinks this is a bad idea. I will probably start trying to get ahold of previous Alum that I know that climb see if they know of anybody here still interested. Check facebook and myspace for climbers, and post fliers (if I can get school permision). I am getting pretty excited!

Mike Lane wrote:I personally think that an organized club is anathema to the spirit of climbing.

Keeping stupid rules out of the club and keeping it open to anyone makes it work. It becomes a self-policing entity that makes up the rules as you go along, like here.

One more thing: Do not collect dues. This is one of the worst annoyances in clubs. Then you fight over how to spend the money. Everything you want to do as a group should be funded on a case by case basis with pass the hat.

Just keep the club unofficial. Being a student, you really don't know how F'd up lawyers and insurance companies have made things regarding liability. Meet at a bar, or your flat, but not in the school.

If you have any stone buildings on campus, start buildering. That's a good way to meet fellow or potential climbers. When security tries to kick you off, scream 1st amendment violations, as you were expressing yourself.

About 15 years ago I gave a lecture to the climbing club at Cherry Creek H.S., a big-ass school here in CO. I expected a classroom with maybe 10 kids. Instead, the club had at least 200 kids in it and had to use the lecture hall. I was told to avoid talking any specifics which may lead to the kids getting out and self-guiding based on info I may have provided. As it turned out, any climbing these kids did had to be top-rope only; but with 2 ropes and 2 belayers! And God only knows what kind of certifications any adult involved with them had to have. After the lecture I was swamped by the kids to get out for some real climbing, but I was way too frikkin scared to even consider it.

Thats why you want nothing official about this.

On a final note, if you do get something going, design a tat (or better yet a brand) you all could get to remind you of these times. They don't last forever.

Andrew - I am a strong believer in climbing clubs.
A few words of advice from a life long clubber.
Do not settle for anything less than satisfying your loftiest goals when creating a new club or deciding upon an existing club to join.
Early on, I abstained from joining the Minnesota Rovers, Colorado Mountain Club or American Alpine Club, in favor of affiliation with the DLFA and DCCC. I have never regretted my decision.
Would The Rovers, CMC or AAC recognize such significant acheivements as the first blindfolded, ropeless, hallucinogenic decent of Slickslides at Taylors Falls, or the twelve-man, fifth-o-bourbon each, midnight ascent of The Secret Gully in The Valley? I think not.
Do not settle for second best. Model your new club on the successful ventures of your great predecessors, such as The Vulgarians, Banditos. DLFA, or DCCC and you will not go wrong.

Luckily I had the opportunity to be the president of the outdoor club at the University of Denver in recent years, DUAlpineClub.org. We did a lot of different activities (skiing, climbing, backpacking, whitewater, etc), however climbing was one of our major basis for the club. While you are in a different situation altogether you might start something that can successfully thrive for many years to come.

From my experience the school let us do our own thing when it came to our outdoor activities as we were covered by the insurance policy that was given to all the sports clubs at the school; so while they require us to do the basic CPR/First Aid stuff we would manage our abilities on our own (wilderness first aid classes, advanced teaching from the Colorado Mountain School, lots of internal training). We have a bunch of waiver forms that they need to fill-out but otherwise we have never had a serious climbing injury on any of our trips (thankfully).

Luckily our location in Denver let us travel all over Colorado and Utah to many different areas. Primarily we would attract some badass officers that would lead the climbs and ensure safety as we would have a bunch of beginners come on trips. So on our organized trips we might not do anything crazy, however we would meet tons of new people and go do the crazy things on our own. The club worked as a gateway for exploring the outdoors and also as a great meeting place for advanced outdoor enthusiasts.

So my advice is to work with the school and find out the info. Ideally you would want to build up the club and maybe get funding from the school which will help pay for far-off adventures (which is awesome) and slowly build up the club. Today our club is the largest on-campus, however it took many years of strong leadership to get it to that level; so have fun short-term but plan for the long-term staying power of the club.

A few other tips might be to see if there is a hiking/outdoor club already in existence and maybe join up with them to do a few small things to feel out interest and get a feel for how the administrators handle clubs on your campus. Also really build-up relationships with campus officials as they want to see students involved in things like this, however they might be hesitant due to the misconceived danger in the sport.

It is one hell of a good time and if you go all out it will be lots of work but the rewards will be amazing.

Tom pretty much summed up a big difference between organized clubs & casual out with friends.

With an organized club and even as a volunteer with insurance coverage (which could also be a professional guide with their insurance), myself/the guide either has to take total safety control measures to prevent any incident or keep a hands off approach & let participants do what they want and just show them the general area we all want to climb. I've done it successfully both ways with participants enjoying the outing. Frankly, I've found technical trips are easier to manage than hiking trips.

Going out with friends seems more an acceptance of risk situation to me.

Ok so far I have five responses from people interested, I am figuring get these guys all together for a meeting and see if we could post some fliers and get the word out to people I missed not on facebook or myspace because I don't feel that is a very good place to find climbers it just gave me a starting place. I figure if we can get enough members we will discuss being a college affiliated group after we have been around for a month or two. If a couple of these guys are good climbers I was thinking of aranging to have a group of four or so come with me to the St. Louis gym and take a top rope site manager course and a lead climbing course at a group rate.

I think the liability thing varies school to school. Pitt had a pretty big club, about 200 people who paid dues. We got away with quite a bit trad, vertical caving,and kayacking. The group ran several instructional classes, which were pretty much the blind leading the blind. I think we were lucky-nobody ever died.

Penn state's club on the other hand I believe was not allowed to do anything other than top roping. If you are trying to form a club I might suggest something more general than climbing, you'll get more people interested if you do hiking and other stuff. Sounds less dangerous too.

The benefit of a club is money. I think the budget was a round 5K, the money came entirely from student activity fees. Most went to gas and van rental. It was pretty easy to get out every weekend without worrying about gas money.

The downside of a club is that you spend most of you time teaching beginners. From my experience this really hampers your own improvement. However, alot of people enjoy that game.