We are the UK's largest and most active ski touring and ski mountaineering club, with almost 1400 members spread throughout the UK and overseas. The purpose of our Club is to encourage ski touring, ski mountaineering, and associated activities. This page describes:
- what we do as a Club
- our current priorities
What we do as a Club
Our Club is run for members by members. This means people stepping forward to get involved and doing some fantastic things together, such as:
- pulling together a programme of ski tours and meets, with over 60 trips in the Alps and elsewhere and about 15 meets in Scotland each year
- developing and supporting an enthusiastic group of volunteer tour leaders through training, mentoring and other support
- providing practical and online training for members
- improving the emphasis on safety whilst out ski touring
- setting ourselves an innovative "low carbon challenge" to help reduce the carbon footprint of our ski touring
- producing a high-quality Yearbook of all our trips and other activities which is well-loved by members
- keeping members informed and engaged about club activities and ski touring more generally, through the Yearbook, newsletters, website, webinars and Facebook, and by bringing more members together
- encouraging a more diverse membership
- ensuring that we run the Club effectively by looking after club funds carefully and collecting membership subs
Club Strategy: current priorities (2022-2025)
Every 3 years the club reviews it’s priorities and strategic plans for the future. Having a Club Strategy sounds a bit grand, but it's really just a way of organising what we do a bit better and ensuring that we have volunteers and money in place to help make it happen. Our current main priorities are:
- To promote ski touring and ski mountaineering, by continuing to offer a diverse touring programme both in Scotland and abroad, with a wide range of tours to meet the needs of members of all abilities and aspirations.
- To encourage safety and best practice across all club activities, by acknowledging risks and responsibilities inherent to ski touring, and by continuing to communicate key safety messages and best practice to members.
- To help members develop their ski touring potential, by delivery of a wide menu of training across all skill levels, from entry level introduction to more advanced skills necessary for unguided ski touring, leadership and adventurous trips.
- To take positive action to engage and respond to the impact of climate change in the mountain environment, by continuing to promote awareness, choice and behaviour change, with the aim of embedding climate change consciousness across all club activities and strategy.
- To facilitate a broad, inclusive, and self-sustaining membership, by continuing the 2019 Youth and Diversity initiative and by looking at opportunities to extend its scope across gender, race, and opportunity.
- To be a well-run and sustainable club built on good governance and organisational leadership, by continuing to refine the Club’s management through effective delegation, subdivision of roles and workload, more structured budgeting, and planning in a framework that makes the most of the Club’s human resources.
- To strengthen and further develop member engagement in the volunteer ethos of the club, by encouraging involvement through better transparency to club processes and by supporting, training, and rewarding volunteers.
- To make it easier for members to engage with other members, by facilitating spontaneous member to member activities through a mapping-based member search facility and through regional WhatsApp groups.
- To celebrate the heritage and achievements of the club in preparation for the club’s centenary in 2025, by setting up a working group to develop ideas for the ESC 100th anniversary in 2025.
A more detailed explanation of current club strategy can be found here:
Our previous strategies are listed here:
Eagle Ski Club Strategy 2018 (PDF)
Eagle Ski Club Strategy 2016 (PDF)
Eagle Ski Club Strategy 2013 (PDF)
Member Surveys
We sometimes carry out a survey of members to find out a bit more about the views and needs of the members. The most recent surveys are:
One of our priorities is to increase membership by younger people. To help inform this work, we carried out a survey of our younger members in 2020. You can find the results of the survey here: