A new Mountaineering Museum has opened in Boulder, CO at the American Mountaineering Center, part of the venerable American Mountaineering Club.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Plastic reigns. A 135-square-foot scale model of Mount Everest took
more than a year to carve out of polyurethane foam, each quarter-inch
interval representing 16 feet. As a three-dimensional topographic map
the model is interesting, if rather abstract and lifeless. On the
gallery’s walls, mannequins ascend faux rock faces. The only real rocks
on offer, unfortunately, are a few samples of granite and limestone in
a tray that can be touched.

I’ve always found it exceedingly difficult to explain climbing and ski mountaineering to those who don’t practice the alpine arts – there’s just a lack of a common vocabulary. I guess this is what the massive list of mountaineering literature attempts to do, but in my estimation, these kinds of books only succeed in getting climbers excited about climbing, not communicating what climbing is to non-climbers.

This looks like a noble effort though. I’ll check it out next time I’m in Boulder.