In Colorado, the lion’s share of summit logbooks are collected, replaced and maintained by volunteers of the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC). Climbers began placing logbooks on mountaintops in the early 1900’s. As explained in The Colorado Mountain Club: The First Seventy-Five Years of a Highly Individual Corporation 1912-1987:
“The Club has installed climbers’ registers on summits since the first days. The original canisters for the registers, hefty steel tubes, attracted lightning bolts, supposedly. They also did not always stay closed, and some registers furnished non-nutritious sustenance for rodents which ventured to 14,000 feet.”
The present registers, made of plastic, solve those problems (but do not solve the problem of two-footed varmints who squirrel the registers into their packs to take as souvenirs). CMC volunteers mail or physically deliver the registers to the Colorado Mountain Club, located in the American Mountaineering Center in Golden, CO, where they are filed in archives according to the season in which they are received.
“Some registers are in great condition, while others are clearly affected by weather and other elements. We have records dating back to 1912, nearly 100 years,” says Rachel Scott, Marketing and Outreach Manager of the CMC.
Want to be part of the fun? The CMC is looking for volunteers to place and retrieve logbooks and help create the PVC summit canisters (or come up with a better design). If you’re interested, contact the CMC at cmc.org or call 303-279-3080.
