SummitPost.org

What happens to the Summit Climbing Logs that you find in a neat little tube on the summit of some mountains? Who maintains them? Does anyone ever archive them? I had someone ask me this - wondering if they could access their entry from 1976 ... it seemed like a crazy question, but then, who knows. Anyone know what becomes of those little log books found in the hard tubes chained to the summits?

Thanks.

They sometimes get stolen by thieves who ought to leave the logs where they found them.

At least in Grand Teton, the registers have been preserved and are on-line:

http://www.tetonclimbinghistory.com/index.html

Glacier National Park has many registers in their archives.

I think that The Mountaineers in Seattle have a collection.

But, many are taken as souvenirs, destroyed by those who don't believe in them, or just weather away because their containers are not adequate.

Thought I heard that the American Alpine Club maintains at least some summit registers.

That's cool - I had no idea that they ever left the summits! The particular inquiry I reference was for the Crestones in Colorado's Sangre de Cristo range.

I've been hunting around on line and found someone in the Colorado Mountain Club whose title is CANISTERS AND REGISTERS - although for the San Juans.
http://www.cmc.org/about/san_juan.aspx

I found it interesting that that was an assigned duty and this shed light on the subject.

... still searching. I'm on a mission now - LOL

oh, and I just found this post here on this web site - what a hoot!
http://bit.ly/9TGo4H

Secor mentions in the introduction that the Sierra Club has a policy of removing registers and keeping them in their archives at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkley.

He also mentions that the first summit register placed in the Sierras (placed in 1864) was removed for safekeeping in 1895 by the Sierra Club, and subsequently destroyed in the 1906 EQ/Fire.

I'd like to scan some and put them on a "permanent" site, then remove the originals. Some have original papers scraps that are just falling apart, and will end up as dust in the can.