Pitons were the main form of protection for climbers in the early days, there was nothing like the feeling of hammering a piton into a good crack and clipping in to calm the nerves. Most pitons were imported from abroad in the early days, mostly from Austrian company, Stubai. A guy called Denny Moorehouse was one of the first guys to start making pitons in the UK when he created Clogwyn Climbing Gear at a place called Deniolen in North Wales.

Pitons were some of his earliest products, we have lots of them in the collection including these three little fellas. They are fairly heavyweight, no-nonsense kind of pitons, these three being the thicker versions of the ‘offset eyes’, we have the thinner versions elsewhere in the collection.

Having been reduced from Clogwyn Climbing Gear to Clog, the early gear had a simple CLOG logo stamped on it, later versions had slightly smaller lettering with an oval elipse. There’s one early and two later versions here.

We’re not sure exactly where these three came from having found them in our large box which we call the ‘piton graveyard’. These ones were exhumed!