Many of the world’s great armies have mountain troops of one sort or another and they obviously need to be equipped to operate in the mountains. In America they have the 10th Mountain Division which began life in 1943 as the 10th Light Division (Alpine) and has gone through various changes since then while still retaining the word Mountain somewhere in its designation. This fine little set of pitons seem to have been part of the 10th Mountain Division’s equipment, one of them being conveniently stamped ‘US MIL-PAR 1965’ which we assume to mean, United States Military Part 1965, and whilst the other four are not stamped they are pretty much identical and come from the same source which is a fellow gear collector out in California, called Art McCarthy, who we trade excess gear with. A company of secondhand book dealers out in Colorado, called Chessler Books, have pitons very similar to these for sale in their ephemera section for 9 US $ in 2014. Earlier ‘Ames’ versions from WWII are more expensive. Ames presumably made the earlier versions but we are not sure when they made these later models though a US engineering company or outdoor equipment manufacturer would probably have got the contract.