Evolution in Ice is what some people called it….the 1960’s when a century or so of cutting steps in the ice with long handled wooden ice axes was fast becoming a thing of the past. Climbers were venturing out onto ever steeper ice and required different tools to stay in contact. Picks were drooped, shafts shortened, points sharpened and arguments raged as to the best design. Custom made tools were to arrive a few years later, most notably with the arrival of Hamish MacInnes’s Terrordactyl in 1970….a revolution! Meanwhile folk were hacking their old axes to bits and rebuilding them in their chosen style. In this case, Ian Sykes, who owned the outdoor gear shop, Nevisport, in Fort William at the time, cut the wooden shaft off his Charlet-Moser Super Conta and replaced it with a shorter glass fibre shaft, attached a wrist loop and off he went to do an ice climb on Ben Nevis. The Terrordactyls and the Chouinard Zeros came along a few years later consigning his prototype to the shed and we retrieved it 40 years later …excellent player in the evolutionary process.