‘Piton’ is a French word meaning ‘little peg’, though it’s been universally adopted by the world of mountaineering to define a lump of metal that you drive into a rock fissure with a hammer. There are dozens of different shapes and sizes of pitons, most have fancy names like King Pins, Channels, Rings, Bongs, Blades etc, though, unfortunately, the little fellas we have here in the collection don’t generally get a nice name in the equipment catalogues. We do know a little secret though as the ‘pioneers’ of old used to call them ‘pins’ because they were so small you could pin a nappy up with them! We have seen them simply called ‘pegs’ too.

Anyway, the ones we have here are made of mild steel as indicated in the advert above. Mild steel pitons were thought to follow any natural bends or folds in the rock and that the actual rock would bite into the steel a little to make a more secure anchor. The hard steel versions bludgeoned their way in and didn’t treat the rock very kindly in the process.

The lovely couple of ‘pins’ we have here in the collection are in mint condition having never been used on rock or nappy. A nice little addition to our ‘pitonage’.