For over a hundred years mountaineers had been wrapping ropes around their waists, hitching them over their shoulders and twisting them around their bodies to get some friction in order to hold a fall, until the late 1960’s when a German climber called Franz Sticht came along and created the ‘Sticht Plate’ which was basically a metal or aluminium plate that created the friction when used in conjunction with a karabiner. The following 50 years or so have seen hundreds of ‘refinements’ of Franz Sticht’s original design with the two main objectives being to create a device that can deal with a variety of rope diameters and one that can also be safely used as an abseil device. The example we have here is a homemade version of a simple ‘sticht’ plate – the word ‘sticht’ has become universally used for all belay plates in the same way that we call vacuum cleaners ‘hoovers’ – cut from a piece of aluminium. It was and still is, perfectly functional, and very similar to production models that appeared in the 1970’s. Mountain Guide Dave(Smiler)Cuthbertson donated it to the collection.