Welcome to the American Alpine Journal Online!
This service is made possible by American Alpine Club members and supporters. Please consider joining or supporting the AAC.
Search all of the Journals back to 1929 by keyword(s). See Search Tips.
Enter one or more keywords to search for. Note that '*' and '?' wildcards are supported.
Check the AAJ Index for spelling alternatives and other useful information.
We strongly recommend upgrading to Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 before searching AAJ Online.
About the AAJ
Published since 1929, the American Alpine Journal is the premier annual record of significant mountaineering and long rock-climbing ascents worldwide. American Alpine Club members receive the 500-page American Alpine Journal as a membership benefit.
The AAJ Online brings you the entire collection of American Alpine Journals back to 1966. The most recent Journal is not made available on-line until its successor is printed. Over time we will work back to our first issue printed in 1929.
Feature Articles and Country Reports
There are two primary types of downloadable AAJ articles. "Feature articles" appeared in the front of the AAJ; these are mostly stories about the year's most significant climbs, written by the climbers who did them. "Country Reports" are from the AAJ's Climbs & Expeditions section; they contain news from all the new routes reported during the previous year.
Other AAJ Resources
If you are a regular user of the AAJ, we suggest you supplement the online search tool by downloading the AAJ Index to aid in your searches. This document is especially useful for exploring spellings of foreign peak names.
AAJ Index 1929-2007.pdf (3.7 MBytes)
AAJ Book Reviews 1929-2007.pdf (305 KBytes)
Warning: Most pdf downloads (including the index) are between 1 and 5 megabytes in size. They will be very slow to download on a dial-up connection.
Direct questions and comments to:
Gary Landeck
Library Director
303/384-0110 x21
glandeck@americanalpineclub.org
Donations
Articles from the AAJ Online can be downloaded at no charge. However, the AAJ is made possible by the dues and donations of AAC members and contributions from sponsors and users of the online Journal. If you find the AAJ Online to be useful, we request that you help pay for the service through a donation to the AAC or by joining the Club. The AAJ Online is provided free to AAC members, however we can use your donations as well!
Pre-publication articles (those offered online prior to the print publication of the AAJ) are offered exclusively to AAC members through the Members Only pages.
What the AAJ Reports
In the early years, the AAJ reported primarily on expeditions made by American Alpine Club members, but soon it started chronicling important ascents by all climbers. For the past several decades the AAJ has attempted to gather reports from all the first ascents of mountain and big wall routes worldwide. From the early 1970s to 2004, the AAJ rarely reported on the Alps or New Zealand. We are now publishing summaries from New Zealand and Scotland and first-person reports from Norway; soon we will provide summary coverage of the Alps.
We limit our reporting to all-day routes (climbs of U.S. Commitment Grade IV and longer). Shorter routes are rarely found in the AAJ, except in some regional summaries. As much as possible, articles and reports are written by the climbers themselves. We report on new routes, significant attempts, and occasionally on important repeat ascents. Various summaries of other events in select mountain ranges can also be found in Climbs & Expeditions. For a brief account of the AAJ's history, read Preface 2004 AAJ.
Volunteers
These AAJ pdfs were made possible through the extremely generous efforts of many volunteers. We thank them profusely and wish to recognize them here.
There are still projects to be done, including creating pdf splits of additional years, correcting errors, creating a master table of contents, and building recommended reading lists. If you are interested in furthering the usefulness of the AAJ Online, please consider volunteering! Please send a note to the editor at aaj@americanalpineclub.org. Thank you!
Key Support for this project has been provided by Climbing Magazine and Camp USA.