Folk have been been burying things in the ground, with ropes attached to them to form anchors, for centuries. The Vikings, for example, buried logs in the sand to anchor their longships when they came ashore. Quite how such anchors got to be called ‘deadmen’ we are not sure, though the word does conjure up a picture of some hapless corpse being put to a final use! Scottish mountaineer, John Cunningham, is widely credited as being one of the first to use small sheets of metal/aluminium to make anchors in the snow for climbers, having used a similar piece of wood to anchor dog teams in Antarctica. Being fairly simple to make, lots of folk made their own back in the good old days as is the case with this one which is the work of Scottish mountaineer, Bill Skidmore, who was a prolific gear manufacturer. The unusual thing about this deadman is the wee curved bit in the middle. Deadmen have a tendency to move or slip from side to side in certain snow conditions and manufacturers have been searching for a way to stop it happening since they first began making them. Bill may well have found the solution. Sadly, he’s no longer here to capitalize on his idea since he passed away in 2015. His widow, Mary, kindly passed on some of his gear which includes this innovative deadman which we reckon dates from the 1970s.