Hugh McNicholl set up a wee workshop down in Glasgow around 1979 , the idea being to manufacture climbing equipment. Unfortunately, the early attempts were a bit of a disaster as his first batch of drive in ice screws broke when being hammered in, leaving Hugh with several hundred unusable screws (see related items).

Undaunted, Hugh changed the name of his company from Mountain Engineering to Mountain Technology and moved to Glencoe in 1981, opening a little factory which primarily made ice-axes, the only ones made in Scotland at the time. The business went from strength to strength throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but Hugh was of an engineering background rather than a businessman and, unfortunately, the money men got the better of him in 2004 and he reluctantly closed down the business. Having married Australian, Mary Rosengran in 1992, Hugh moved to Australia in 2007 where he died prematurely in 2012.

Always wanting to improve on previous versions, Hugh produced a string of axes to cater for an ever more sophisticated market. This fabulous example of a Technical Axe was one of the more successful in the range. It was given to us by David (Spook) Munro who worked with Hugh for several years assembling his axes. Hugh gave the axe to Spook when the factory closed in 2004 and he very kindly passed it on to us.