Carter served as an officer of the American Alpine Club from 1954 to 1958 and as editor of the American Alpine Journal from 1960 to 1995. Under his tenure as editor the Journal became one of the pre-eminent worldwide journals of record for mountaineering. He continued to participate in mountaineering expeditions, including one to survey Ojos del Salado (6,893 m) in 1956, several trips to the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, and a second expedition to Nanda Devi in 1976, which he co-led with Louis Reichardt and Willi Unsoeld.