We have kept these two ice daggers together as they were both donated by our old pal, John Cheesmond, a retired mountain guide. The Parba is a custom made ice dagger whilst the other one is a Stubai Ice Piton, customized to make a dagger. Daggering was a very short and very scary phase in the evolution of ice climbing when folk were venturing out onto ever steeeper ice around 1969/70. Leading exponents of the ‘art’ in Scotland were John Cunningham and Bill March. Parba was a mountaineering equipment company run by Paul Seddon who eventually joined forces with Troll Equipment. The Austrian company, Stubai, have been making mountain hardware for over a century and the ice piton we have here dates from the 1950’s.