Vitaly Abalakov is probably Russia’s most famous mountaineer both inside and outside of his native country. He is also known by ice climbers around the world for inventing the Abalakov Thread, a method of using holes in ice through which a piece of rope can be threaded to make an anchor. Though arrested by Stalin’s hated secret police, the NKVD, for “open public propaganda” in 1938, he was later released and went on to become a highly accomplished mountaineer and Russian Master of Sport. Our very own, Hamish MacInnes, climbed with him at Camp Spartak in the Caucuses in 1961 and during that time Abalakov gave Hamish this hammer which he had made himself; a rarer item of mountaineering history would be hard to find. It bears the CCCP inscription which translated means the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Hamish very kindly donated this fabulous item to us in 2016 along with the photo opposite which shows himself second from the left and Abalakov in the centre with a bald head and checked shirt. The other folk in the picture are all Masters of Sport.