We’re told that German mountaineers, Franz Riegele & Willi Welzenbach were the first to use ice pitons when they did the first ascent of a climb on the Grosses Wiesbachhorn in Austria, way back in 1924, and as they were the first we can only assume that they made the pitons themselves, or put the local blacksmith to work. It wasn’t long before they were being produced commercially as we can see from the 1930 Sporthaus Jungborn catalogue above where we see Eishaken mit Zahnen (ice pitons with teeth) for sale.

Fast forward a decade or so to the 1970s and there were a few ice pitons for sale in the UK, mostly from the Austrian company Stubai, though ice climbers workshops were ringing to the sounds of hammers, grinders and welders as they emulated Franz & Willi’s idea of making their own.

It was a time when we still had an engineering industry in the UK and engineers had the ability and wherewithal to make things, especially if material was ‘borrowed’ from the shipyard or wherever.

Unfortunately we don’t know who made it, but we have a fine example of a homemade tubular piton here in the collection which looks unused, a fine addition to the collection.