Ice pitons were the forerunners of ice screws and were simply a lump of metal that you bashed into the ice to make an anchor or running belay. The problem then was that you had to hack it back out again…not easy on steep ice.

J Charlet was a Frenchman more famous for making ice axes than ice pitons, though they seem to be part of the ‘armoury’ in the 1960s, soon to be superseded by ice screws. As they were fairly simple in design lots of folk made their own as you can see in the picture opposite.

Charlet and the Austrian firm, Stubai, seem to have been the only commercial producers.