In 1963, two groups within the American Alpine Club (AAC), one led by Charles D. Hollister and Samuel C. Silverstein, M.D., then in New York, and the other led by Peter Schoening of Seattle, Washington, began lobbying the National Science Foundation to support an expedition to climb Mount Vinson. The two groups merged in spring 1966 at the urging of the National Science Foundation and the AAC and Nicholas Clinch was recruited by the AAC to lead the merged expeditions. Officially named the American Antarctic Mountaineering Expedition (AAME) 1966/67, the expedition was sponsored by the AAC and the National Geographic Society, and supported in the field by the U.S. Navy and the National Science Foundation Office of Antarctic Programs.