The Climaxe is a shorter version of the Chouinard Frost Ice Axe, hence the name of the pick, Developed by Yvonne Chouinard circa 1972 Climaxe’s were part of the ice axe revolution when ever-steeper ice climbs required better axes to make progress. Hamish MacInnes had produced his revolutionary Terrordactyl back in the 1960s and this was Chouinard’s response.

Hamish had the pick of his ‘Terror’ at 45 degrees, and relied on a kind of hooking technique, Chouinard just dropped the pick a little and had some backward facing teeth to stop it popping back out again. Both were quite tricky to get back out of the ice and once a climber had wrestled them free a nice little cut across the bridge of the nose appeared as they popped out!

Wooden-shafted axes of all descriptions were soon to be replaced by stronger metal, glass-fibre and composite version, so by the 1980s wood was – almost – history and confined to collectors’ cabinets.