The 2025 Annual Benefit Gala: Celebrating the Climbing Life

[American Alpine Club]

This event was supported by Vibram, Adidas FiveTen, and First Western Trust. 
At this year's AAC Gala, the energy for celebrating climbing was unprecedented. Three hundred sixteen climbers from all over the country gathered in Denver, CO, including longtime members, athletes, awardees, and climbing legends. The night was filled with bold stories of climbing, community, and history. There was a thread connecting them all: the American Alpine Club.
“The AAC is a people-first organization,” Nina Williams remarked in her opening speech. She noted that the AAC’s grants, lodging, events, advocacy, library and archives, volunteers, and membership all bring people together. 
AAC Executive Director Ben Gabriel noted that climbing isn’t only about the summits we reach but the partnerships we build, and as the AAC looks towards the future, we are stronger together. 
As one way to celebrate the richness of the people that make up the AAC, the 2025 awards were given out for accomplishments in climbing, advocacy, literacy, and volunteerism. French Groupe Militaire de Haute Montagne of Chamonix received the David A. Sowles Memorial Award. Other award winners included Michael Wejchert for the H. Adams Carter Literary Award, Brooke Raboutou for the Robert Hicks Bates Award, Rick Wilcox for the Angelo Heilprin Citation, and Outdoor Alliance for the David R. Brower Conservation Award. Later, Jack Tackle accepted the Honorary Membership award, and Kelly Cordes accepted the Pinnacle Award during their speeches. 
Recipient of multiple AAC grants, AAC member Zach Clanton told the story of his most recent climb on the Southeast Face of The Trickster in Alaska, where he and Matt Kilgerman put up The Raven-Wolf Route (5.10 C2). It was the second ascent the mountain had seen. John Svenson had first climbed it 42 years ago.
“This summer, we pulled off a 6,000-foot pure rock climb on a mountain with all the mysteries intact. This was high adventure at its finest,” said Clanton. 
During this climb, Clanton felt connected to past generations of Alaskan adventurers like Svenson, an Alaskan artist and climber, whose art was included in the Gala auction. The climb inspired Clanton to connect to his artistic side. Clanton went on to reflect on how the Trickster ascent represented how all of those AAC grants over the years had literally changed his life’s trajectory.
When former AAJ editor and Pinnacle Award winner Kelly Cordes took the stage, we learned he was a super fan of Jack Tackle when he was a young climber in the 90s. When Tackle visited Missoula, Montana, where Cordes was living at the time, Cordes went to hear him speak. After Tackle was done speaking, Cordes got the courage to go up to Tackle. 
“Jack gave me the gift of his attention and his presence, and I came away feeling not that I can be him—we all know there’s only one Jack f***ing Tackle—but deeply inspired as a person beyond the super hero I thought he was and who I now know him to be,” said Cordes. 
Cordes went on to describe his inspiration drawn from the AAJ—”it was, and it still is, like the Bible to me”—and his many adventures as an alpinist. 
After all this talk about Jack Tackle, Tackle himself finally took to the stage and imposed wisdom on the room. 
“The three tenets I came up with as my mantra for alpinism were first, commitment. Commitment to the goal, to yourself, and to your partners. Vision, the second one, was the ability to see what is possible and make a plan to achieve it. And the last was trust. Trust in yourself and trust in your partners,” said Tackle. 
Much like the chatter around a campfire after a long day of climbing, this Gala was full of high energy, sharing stories and laughter. The celebration of our climbing history and the push to pave the way for the future of climbing were inspiring. With all the laughter and catching up with old friends, there was an undertone of passion—passion for what we want to see next, passion for the importance of storytelling, and passion for uplifting one another. When climbers come together through the AAC, we make an impact. 
The money raised through the liv...

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The 2025 Annual Gala: Celebrating the Climbing Life — American Alpine Club

This event was supported by Vibram, Adidas FiveTen, and First Western Trust.   At this year's AAC Gala, the energy for celebrating climbing was unprecedented. Three hundred sixteen climbers from all over the country gathered in Denver, CO, including longtime members, athletes, awardees, an

American Alpine Club (americanalpineclub.org)