General information

The Eindhoven Students Alpine Club ESAC is among the bigger students sports clubs in Eindhoven. It offers to its members all things necessary for practicing mountain sports: climbing activities, information, training and equipment. The climbing activities differ widely, from sports climbing in a gym through rock climbing in Belgium to scaling the higher peaks in the Swiss Alps. Apart from that, other activities are organized, like training sessions, parties (?), skiing, hiking and many many more...

• Mountaineering
• Sports climbing
• Other activities
• How to become a member
• ESAC addresses

Many of the links on this site are in dutch. Sorry about that; please e-mail if you need more information.

Mountaineering

	Uko flying high.

Many ESAC-members spend (part of) their summer in the Alps. They make tours, either individually, in a course or with our club. Possibilities include:

• Summer courses

  ESAC is allied with other Student Alpine Clubs in NSAC. This Netherlands Students Alpine Club organizes summer climbing courses in the Swiss Alps. The program offered consists of beginner-, semi-advanced-, advanced-, leader-, and sports climbing courses. Attending one of these courses prepares you to make alpine tours on your own, and eventually teach to groups of less experienced climbers.

	Walking ESAC'ers...

• ESAC-hiking camp

  Supervised bij a few higly experienced ESAC-staff members, we make a ten-day tour that anyone, beginner or K2-climber, can attend.

• ESAC-Basecamp (EBI)

  Each summer we have a different camping site somewhere in the Alps for a basecamp, where we will stay for apprx. 2 weeks. From this camp tours can be made in groups with an average of four members.

	Bally clims a frozen waterfall.

• Rope exercise

  Techniques involving rope and other equipment are taught during our climbing weekends and at several Tuesday evenings at our own outdoor climbing wall. These evenings are not only meant to teach new techniques to the less experienced, but at least as importantly are aimed at synchronizing, and wherever necessary correcting, the know-how already mastered by our members. Another important goal is ensuring that our climbers evolve safely and quickly into rope leaders who can then train and educate the newer members. This ongoing process is essential to our club, as it is the only way to provide beginning climbers with a safe start. A commission provides an overview of the techniques to be mastered by publishing booklets available to all members. Different issues for both the less and more experienced climber are available (dutch only, sorry).

• Winter courses

  Ever since they started them in 1993, NSAC have been organizing off-piste skiing courses. These courses are structured like the summer courses to offer a safe introduction to this beautiful type of alpine sport.

Sports climbing

Sports climbing is a year-round activity for most ESAC-members. Not only do we climb in Belgium, Germany and France in every season, we also have some excellent artificial training structures available in Eindhoven.

	Jeroen climbs in Saffres.

• Climbing weekends and vacations

  Every year, mainly during spring and autumn, ESAC organize about 30 climbing weekends in the Belgian and German crags. Apart from that, we have longer trips to France or Italy at Christmas and easter. During Ascention we traditionally climb the boulders (little rocks) in Fontainebleau, France.

• Climbing wall and gym

  The Eindhoven students sports centre provides us with an excellent outdoor climbing wall and for a few years with an indoor "boulder" wall. A training is given here once a week for both more and less advanced climbers. Furthermore, every Thursday evening members of ESAC are climbing in the Eindhoven indoor climbing gym.

Other activities

Apart from climbing 'pur sang', we do a lot of other things, ranging from exercising to editing a club magazine.

• Exercise

  ESAC trains on Mondays from 19:00 to 20:15 h for beginners and from 30:15 to 21:30 h for advanced climbers. Anyone with a valid students sports card can attend them a few times before becoming a member.

	No party without a bit of beer...

• Parties/ lectures

  On a regular basis, the activities committee organizes a lecture by a famous climber, a party or some other leisure activity, like the traditional 'Sinterklaasborrel'.

• Library and equipment depot

  ESAC have their own libary of climbing books, topos and maps, as well as an extended collection of climbing equipment, available to members so you don't have to buy all of your stuff at once.

• Club magazine

  Not really an activity of course, but still of advantage to all members, is our bi-monthly club mag the 'Musketon', containing tons of information and stories. Our club calender and news are published monthly in the 'karabinair'. All in dutch, I'm afraid...

• Special activities

  A few times every year, sports other than climbing are practiced, like caving, path finding and skiing. We also take part in the worlds' biggest students running event, the 'Batavierenrace'.

• Newbieweekends

  Every year there is a number of climbing weekend, usually in the German crags, dedicated to our new and future members. During these weekends, we try to give people a good impression of climbing in general and ESAC in specific, and provide them with a good base for future climbing activities. For dates please see our agenda.

Becoming a member

For our climbing members, membership of the following clubs is mandatory:

ESAC:
• Application forms are available from the committee.
• Contribution is € 20 for a year.

NKBV (dutch mountaineering association) membership and insurance:

• Both mandatory for both ESAC-climbers and summer-course participants!
• Membership fee € 38,75 a year (up to 24 years of age, otherwise € 41,75).
• Insurance fee € 20,50 a year. Covers a.o. luggage theft while travelling and accidents while climbing (or skiing).

If you want to climb in Belgium regularly you might want to buy a 'climbing card' as well (€19) . With this card, you can obtain one of the access cards to the belgian crags for a specific weekend as access to these crags is limited by the belgian mountaineering federation.

Furthermore, if you want to attend the ESAC-training, you must have a students sports card.

ESAC addresses

How can you reach us?

Postal address:

Studenten Sportcentrum

O.L. Vrouwestraat 1

NL-5612 AW Eindhoven

The Netherlands

Homepage:

http://esac.climbing.nl/ provides you with loads of info... in dutch.

E-mail addresses:

for questions and remarks towards the ESAC-committee;

for any comments on this website.

Bank account numbers

General: 1170.52.485

Weekends: 1063.85.542