Scottish mountaineer, Hamish MacInnes, created the first all-metal ice-axe back in 1960/61. Terrordactyls were his next creation, ice climbing tools that revolutionised the world of vertical ice climbing, we have fine examples of these items elsewhere in the collection.

Hamish teamed up with Trevor Peck & Derek Gamble (circa 1965) to create the MacInnes Peck ice-axe, a fine example of which we have here in the collection. The axe was a progression of Hamish’s earlier tools, aimed at the general mountaineer rather than the specialist ice climber. The long pick was designed to penetrate through layers of snow to the ice underneath (hopefully!) while the ‘scooped’ adze would hopefully ‘crowd’ soft snow, which the Scots called ‘crud’, into a usable hold, it didn’t always work!

Derek Gamble packaged the axes into a fancy box, for which he got a design award!

This particular axe once belonged to Mick Tighe’s mountain guiding company, Nevis Guides, he didn’t get an award for looking after it very well!