Charasmatic Glasgow man, Hugh McNicol, set up a small manufacturing company in Glasgow in the late 1970’s and called it Mountain Engineering. Unfortunately, his first enterprise wasn’t a success; several drive in, ice screws turned out too brittle and were consigned to the skip ( we salvaged a couple which you will find elsewhere in the collection) Undaunted, Hugh moved his business to Glencoe in 1981 and started making his very popular range of ice axes along with the iconic Vertige range of steep ice tools. Other items of mountaineering gear started to appear in the late 1990’s though financial difficulties led to various buyouts and amalgamations with companies such as Troll and HB, while Mountain Technology officially went bankrupt in 2004. We are fairly sure that the quick draws we have here in the collection date from the latter, turbulent years when one of the buyout companies made them using the Mountain Technology and MT logo. We don’t think many were made so a bit of a rarity. Hugh married an Australian lass and emigrated down under with her around 2008. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much time to ‘waltz his Matilda’ as he passed away in 2017.