Apparently, a Swiss mountain rescue specialist, Erich Friedli, invented the first ice screw in 1960, attempting to create something more practical than the lumps of metal that were being used at the time – ice pitons – which were hammered in and hacked out; difficult and time consuming. Freidli’s screw was not a huge success and the following year (1961) Stubai – using their trade name Marwa – started production of the first mass produced ice screws, which were designed by Sebastian (Wastl) Mariner, who was also a mountain rescue expert but from Austria rather than Switzerland. The screws worked ok and were a vast improvement on ice pitons. They also worked well as a corkscrew and were a must at the annual climbers’ ball. Salewa came along with their tubular ice screws around 1965/6 which brought the reign of Marwas to an end.