The Simond brothers started making ice-axes in the little town of Chamonix, beneath Mont Blanc, in the 1860s catering for what was back then the Golden Age of mountaineering. Ice-axes were their main product for several decades – along with crampons – though at some point, we reckon the 1950s, they diversified into making karabiners, or mousqueton, as the French have it. Made from perfect, hardened steel, these mousqueton are in almost as good condition as they were eighty to ninety years ago. We found them lurking in our ‘spares’ drawer and don’t really know how they got there – but delighted to have them. P.S. Simond produced one of the world’s first lightweight karabiners in 1948, made from aluminium alloy, so we are guessing the metal versions were around then, slowly being phased out by their later, lighter, counterparts.