Mountain Safety Research(M.S.R.) began life in Seattle, USA. Larry Penberthy had found that some of the gear available to mountaineers at the time wasn’t fit for purpose so decided to do something about it. Wooden shafted ice axes were the norm back then and several accidents occurred as the shafts broke when heavily loaded so Larry created his ‘revolutionary’ ice axe with an aluminium shaft and metal head. Hamish McInnes was creating his own ‘revolutionary’ all metal ice axe over in Scotland about the same time, though Hamish seems to have been first.

The axe we have here in the collection seems to be an early version (circa1975) of the Eagle, which was followed by the Thunderbird, a lightweight, aluminium, T-Bird and a Sumner …“designed for the demanding technical climber”.

This Eagle was once part of Mick Tighe’s Mountain Guiding Company, Nevis Guides.