We are not sure if they actually mined the ore there, but we do know that the good folk of Fulpmes in the Stubai area of Austria have been working with iron since the Middle Ages. In 1897 a group of local blacksmiths got together to form a co-operative to market their products which, at this time were mainly tools and implements for farming. The co-operative, which became known as Stubai, soon branched out into mountaineering products to cater for the boom in the sport during what has become known as the Golden Age – 1860..ish to the outbreak of World War 1. Crampons, ice axes and later, karabiners, were their staple products in the early days and remain pretty much so over a hundred years later since Stubai is still going strong in 2013. Although folk had been bashing lumps of metal into lumps of rocks for centuries to make anchors; pieces of metal called pitons specifically designed for mountaineering didn’t really appear until the 1920’s. Hammers were needed to knock the pitons in and Stubai were one of the first in the market. The one we have here dates from the 1960’s.