The club was founded during the winter months of 1905-6 by William John Rawson Calvert and Hugh Stewart, both undergraduates at Trinity College. It has had three main aims: to arrange lecture series during term, facilitate climbing outings or 'meets' throughout the year and publish a journal, Cambridge Mountaineering. In 1929, it was given the library of mountaineering books and journals amassed by George Wherry (1852-1928), the noted Alpine climber, a surgeon at Addenbrookes Hospital and University Lecturer in Surgery 1884-1914. This became the core of an extensive club library: the Wherry Library.