Page 3 - 1995 Mountaineering Club Bulletin
P. 3
I hope you all enjoy a good Christmas and an active 1996.
Chairman's Corner
Iam sure that you are all aware that Colonel David Nicholls has been in Bosnia for much of the year and that I have been deputising for him as Club Chairman. He wasn't able to give me a great deal of notice that I was to be rewarded with this great honour as he himself didn't seem to receive much notice that he was off to sunnier climes (well a hotter spot anyway). Hopefully he will be back in the UK very soon when I will be pleased to hand back the reins. Just before the AGM I received a letter from David Nicholls and I draw from that in composing this section of the Bulletin.
In his letter David said; “It is a great disappointment that I will miss this year's AGM however, I will be with you in spirit. Here are some thoughts you may wish to draw upon when you give your speech. The Club is in excellent fettle and I believe has achieved the three goals I laid out at the last AGM. The first was to encourage the spirit of adventure by expeditions into the remote ranges of the world. Our list of expeditions is most impressive. The second was to encourage our junior membership to develop their mountaineering skills and experience. The con tinuing success of JSAM and the attendance of the younger membership on our expeditions continues apace. Finally I asked everyone to be proactive in recruiting new members. Our mem bership has grown impressively.
The success of the Club is because of our hard working commit tee and enthusiastic membership. The committee is due to undergo significant change this year. Please will you pass on my thanks to them all for their wonderful contribution; without them our achievements would not have been realised. Lastly, and with great sadness it will be the last year in which Admiral Malcolm will be our President. His leadership and guidance over many years have been quite outstanding. There are so many of us who have drawn inspiration from him and the continuing success of our club is due in a large part to him. He will be
Malcolm Rutherford.
missed but his impact on the RN&RMMC will remain with us for many years to come. I am very honoured to have been select ed to follow in his path as President of the RN&RMMC.”
From a personal point of view I have had cause to look at things from a slightly different perspective during my short tenure as the acting Club Chairman and there are a couple of points that I would share with you. The first is that information about Club Meets in general and JSAM in particular is now well promulgat ed and as a result attendance is impressive. If you are not being kept in the picture it is probably because you have moved on and failed to let the Club Secretary know. Secondly, and echoing what David Nicholls has said, it is the hard work and selfless application of the Club Committee which contributes signifi cantly to the success of our Club. It is, therefore, very disap pointing that we cannot get a volunteer to take up the post of Bulletin Editor and that it has fallen to myself and James Grant to get this edition out. It does require a bit of effort to do and takes up a bit of your free time but someone has got to do it and if we all took the view that it is too difficult the Club would not be in its current healthy position. I would therefore be grateful if you would all carefully re-examine whether you could do the job and make sure that you ask yourself the correct question which is not “Why should I do it ? ” but “Why should I not do it ? ”
David also mentioned previously in this column that 1998 is, to the best of our knowledge, the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Club. It would be nice to issue a bumper edition of the Bulletin at the beginning of that year and if we are to do so we will need to start now. Anyone, particularly the more mature Club members, but not exclusively, who has a good dit or an interesting photograph about any Club related activity in the past 50 years please forward it to me in the first instance. I wish you all safe climbing during 1996.
ANNUAL BULLETIN
Presidential Address
Another year has passed and we can look back with pleasure on the many ambitious and successful enterprises undertaken by Club members. In these I would rate very highly the climb of the nose of El Cap in Yosemite, so entertainingly described by Dave Pearce at this year's AGM.
More importantly, we can also look forward with confidence to a whole range of activities in the next year or so, and I am delighted that the Club meets and JSAM receive such enthusiastic support. I welcome all our new members too, and ask that we all spread the word about the Club to encourage others to join.
Our (unpaid!) Committee work tirelessly to ensure that the Club flourishes, and I must take this opportunity of expressing to them our appreciation of their hard work.
I have been your President for ten years, and it is time for a fresh face at the top table. I have thoroughly enjoyed my tenure, and indeed those of Chairman and Honorary Secretary before it. I look forward to joining the “body of the kirk” at the Tyn-y-Coed next year, leaving the honour of presiding to my exceptionally able successor, David NICHOLLS.
THE ROYAL NAVY & ROYAL MARINES MOUNTAINEERING CLUB
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Steve Jackson
