40th Anniversary at Ballachullish Hotel

Our club, East Kilbride Mountaineering Club, celebrated it's 40th Anniversary on 14th November at the Ballachullish Hotel.

Club History

On the 25th of November 1969, the club was founded with Peter Lawson the first member to grasp the nettle and become chairman. The fees at that time were 30 bob (or £1.50 for those of us too young to remember) and 12/6 or 65p to get on the bus. Oh how times have changed!

The first outdoor meet was to Arrocher on Sunday 14th December 1969 by bus.
This was followed by the first indoor meet held in the territorial Army Centre on the 3rd January 1970 for a talk on "Route planning, Safety and Map Reading."

The first monthly camping weekend was at Glencoe but that activity has lost its appeal to many members, although Nick and Maureen Moss camped at the 2008 Christmas weekend at Milehouse Bothy.

It was decided to fundraise to keep the cost of the monthly buses to a mimimum and this took the shape of a barn dance. It was a great success and was repeated for several years until we decided to have a ceilidh in Atholl House. These varied in popularity over the years but recently it has been a struggle to keep it going.

Some of the original members of the club were with us at our weekend in Ballachullish including Dick Bell, David Baird and Allan Hughes.

We also had some past chairmen and, indeed, chairwomen with us who were applauded for their hard work.

The ethos of the club has remained unchanged over the 40 years.

That is:- to facilitate members' participation in mountaineering and to provide a medium for the informal sharing of knowledge and information among equals - but as we all know it is so much more than this. Within us strong life-long friendships have been formed, and continue to be formed and long may that continue.

Because of the ethos of passing on our knowledge to new and existing members, we have succeeded in providing training in all aspects of our sport allowing our members to gain more experience and satisfaction from doing what we all love to do. That s a fantastic legacy to pass on and I know that all of us are thankful for it.

The training has been so good, in fact, that we have members here this evening that have managed to complete all 284 munros and I like to think that our club has had some part in that. The munroists present are Nick and Maureen Moss, Eddie Haggarty, Allan Hughes and Jim Beattie. On this very day, Allan Hughes and Jim Beattie both completed the last of the 221 Corbetts - so all our congratulations.

The Social side of the club has continued. We have a Hotel weekend in February every year and this has been in Fort William for the last few years as it accommodates the people going out into the hills and the partners who are not interested.

In 2003, a new weekend was added to celebrate special occasions such as landmark birthdays, retirements and anniversaries. This has been very popular and for the last few years we have gone to Invergarry.

It was decided in 2004 to have a Christmas weekend at Mill Cottage where we met "Secret Santa" for the first time. Santa came the guise of Sam and this tradition of a secret Santa has continued.

It is hoped that the club traditions continue and are well attended at least until the 50th Anniversary.

The club members would like to thank Jim for all his work in organising our weekend.