In December 1907 a group of ladies who were climbers in the
Alps met in London and agreed to form a new club, similar to the long-established Alpine Club, which at the time did not accept women members on account of their supposed physical and moral deficiencies in the matter of mountain climbing. The club's first president was
Elizabeth Le Blond, Initially, it was the Alpine Section of the Lyceum Club, an intellectual women's club, to which Elizabeth Le Blond belonged, but in 1908 it established an independent existence. The club had its base at the
Great Central Hotel, Marylebone, As well as arranging climbing expeditions, the Ladies' Alpine Club organised a monthly lecture and provided rooms where members could meet for tea. For the duration of the
First World War, the club's rooms were taken over by the
War Department, but they were restored in 1919. The Alpine Club itself was at first sceptical about the Ladies' Club, but it soon began to take it seriously and to co-operate with it, especially after
Queen Margherita of Italy accepted the position of Honorary President. Despite this apparent rapprochement, a certain animus towards women climbers from their colleagues in the senior club remained for many years.
Ellen Pigeon stated: "In days gone by many A.C.s refused to speak to us," and one of the leading women climbers of the age, the American
Fanny Bullock Workman, found male mountaineers in Britain to be less than friendly to her. In his obituary of Workman, Captain
J. P. Farrar remarked: In 1921 a rival organisation called the
Pinnacle Club was founded by the wives of two members of the
Climbers' Club. When the
British Mountaineering Council was constituted in 1945, both clubs for women, the Ladies' Alpine Club and the Pinnacle Club, were represented on its committee. ==Merger with Alpine Club==