By the end of the 1960’s the era of step cutting with wooden axes, to make progress up steep ice had pretty much come to an end. Hamish MacInnes revolutionised the ice climbing world with the introduction of his Terrordactyls in 1970 and there followed a rash of ice climbing tools in the 1970’s as pretenders to the Terrordactyl throne. They all looked pretty similar and most of them were pretty useless – this was one of them. Chouinard had produced the world’s most iconic ice axes and hammers in the 1970’s with the Zero – named after Zero Gully on Ben Nevis – so quite why this version of the Alpine hammer came along we are not sure, though it is made of steel rather than wood, as the Zero’s were, making it stronger. These tools did enjoy some popularity, probably as much for the name as the practicality but were soon overtaken by technology and consigned to lofts and heritage collections!