American mountaineer, inventor and equipment manufacturer, Yvon Chouinard, created the first aluminium bong back in 1961 at his Great Pacific Iron Works factory in Ventura, California and we think the ones we have here in the collection are early versions, probably from the mid 1960’s. Bong Bongs, or Bongs are so named from the noise they make when banging them into cracks and they were developed to fit into the wide cracks that were found particularly on the big granite walls of Yosemite in California.Sheet steel versions had been around for a while, but the aluminium versions were lighter and more versatile. When camming devices arrived in the 1980’s, bongs became pretty much redundant, like these ones which once belonged to Mick Tighe.