Adolphus Simond was a blacksmith in the little town of Chamonix, in the shadow of Mont Blanc. He made cow bells, agricultural equipment and tools for the crystal hunters in the early days, but when the Golden Age of mountaineering came along in the 1860s he put his skills of working with metal and wood to good use by making ice-axes for the new generation of Alpinists.

The lovely ice-axe that we have here in the collection is an early version, dating from around 1890, the Simonds’ adopted the chamois as their logo/trademark from the very start and the ‘stand alone’ version that we have here on this axe was the earliest. We have fine examples of later versions elsewhere in the collection.

We found this particular axe in a storeroom in the Nevisport shop, Fort William, they needed a wooden ice-axe for a display, but were not too worried what type, so we swapped them for a less rare one.