UKH

I've just popped some photos up of some of my collection of ice axes.  Anyone else got a collection going?  Favourite pieces?  Rarities?  I'm on the lookout for an Eboc pressed steel hammer, a Whillans Whammer and I rather like the look of the Forrest ice tools from the US.  Had the chance to buy a Cunningham Ice Dagger a few years ago, but it was quite expensive.  

Not something I've ever really had much interest in personally, but....

We took a holiday to New Zealand before the pandemic and I read Sir Edmund Hillary's book, quite an old one. I wondered what had happened to the actual axe he sank into the snow on the summit of Everest as we went into his museum near Mt Cook where very little of his personals were on display. After a lot of digging around online, I discovered that it was in a display case on the stairwell of the Auckland War Memorial Museum. A few years back there was a bit of a spat about the fact it was dumped on some stairs and not given a better place. I'd love a swing on it.

Excellent!  There're some very fine old axes in the Mt Cook Visitor Centre, belonging to the pioneers like Jack Clarke and Reverend Green.  I took plenty of photos when I was there (also just before the pandemic).  

I had the chance to buy a very nice Ed Hillary-signed axe a couple of years ago from Australia.  It was beyond my (admittedly meagre) budget, so had to decline.  

I still use my Clog Vulture! (And I also have a Terrordactyl from the same period, which I don't use.)

No collection but I still use my Snowdon Curver. Somewhere in the hut or garage there's a pair of MacInnes Terrors lurking - they won't be used again as I now value my knuckles. Have you been up to Mick Tighe's heritage collection at Roy Bridge? Link here to the website http://www.smhc.co.uk/

Nice collection - that Hummingbird is quite wild!

I've got a Mountain Technology axe/hammer combo I picked up on eBay during the first lockdown last year  - probably from someone on here. Bought to be used as part of a costume for bin day, but didn't get to that costume - not sure I'll ever get round to actually using them in anger on ice.

I still have a fine Charlet-Moser Gabarrou axe from the late 70s: bombproof construction, downcurved pick, good functional adze. They were all the rage at the time, and remained excellent mountaineering axes for many years, but were rendered obsolete for steep ice by the invention of the reverse-curve pick.

Yes I know Mick Tighe, and his collection is something else.  They have some wonderful things up there.  I would try climbing with the Lowe Hummingbirds, but they're in such good unused condition, that I just can't!

I have 2 Chouinard alpine hammers  with their original tape slings, vintage 1970/71

I also have a soft spot for old tools.  my favourite is a Chouinard Alpine hammer that appears to have never been used - purchased it a few years ago in NZ for about $5! The best collection of ice tools/axes I've ever seen is at the Ouray Mountain Sports shop in Ouray, Colorado. They seem to have most tools on the walls - including the Eboc things! 

$5 is pretty good!  Always nice to come away from a holiday with a souvenir axe (much to my wife's dismay).

I have some axes with names or initials inscribed into the wooden handles.  One of them is Roy Brown, who I later googled as being an instructor in North Wales years ago.  It's nice to have some back story to some of the tools.  I also bought Hugh McNichol's MacInnes Terrors off him just before he moved to Australia.  Again, nice to have a personal connection.

Anyone interested in a Chacal and Barracouda?

Is the Barracuda an adze/axe rather than a hammer?  If it is, I'd be interested!  Quite a distinctive design with the slits in the big adze.

Let me know if it is and how much you want for it.

Cheers, Jamie

Awesome wall at Stockport have a pair  of Chacal & Baracuda ( with wide adze ) £20 donation to CAC, they still there last Wednesday 

Iirc, the chacal was the first reverse curve technical tool. Replaceable pick but hammer integral with head. 

The barracuda came out a bit later , with a modified pick attachment design.

So all chacals were hammers .

All barracudas had adzes.

The early chacals , I got mine in 1980 in cham, had the very frustrating habit of sticking on the last tooth when trying to remove it from the ice. A standard filing modification was soon devised by others. I was glad to move on to golden eagles then grivel tools.

I’ve got a Clog axe sold to me, at the factory, by Paul Williams as a ‘Second’ back in the early 80s. Solid tool it is too!

Yes - they're the 60cm hammer and Axe with the wide, slotted adze.  I'll mail you some pictures

Nice, but they'd have to send them up here to Fort William

Thanks, I'll check my email

Did they really make those that long? My Chacal is 50cm (or perhaps 48cm.)

Yes you're right.  I was too lazy to go in the loft!

My first axe was an Ashenbrener. It was crap. I sawed down the shift and fibreglassed it. Then I had 'Terrors' which kept sticking. Ended up with a pair of Mountain Tech Vertige which have been excellent. Be nice to have a really light axe.

Some collection BTW Jamie.

Correcting myself, for the sake of the record: the original Chacals were 45cm; the later ones had a growth spurt to 48cm.

I think it is that way round - they weren't quite the same length as well IIRC. I had a Barracuda at one point - I bought it in a pub from, now, BMG Bruce Goodlad who was doing a sideline business in buying them cheap in Chamonix and bringing them back to Scotland to sell to younger and impressionable members of the GUM club. It was the very end of the reign of the Chacal/Barracuda pair, because Simond had just brought out Piranhas and anyone who was anyone (or wanted to be) on the Scottish scene was buying them, they just had that je ne sais quoi that vertiges lacked! I got a second hand bent shaft Piranha to go with it by answering an ad flogging one on the noticeboard of the Ibrox climbing wall. I guess the next year I started working part time in a climbing shop in Glasgow so blew most of my first wage packet buying a pair of yellow Charlet Moser Pulsars with my staff discount. I had seen the pictures of Jeff Lowe on Octopussy and just knew yellow Pulsars were clearly the future and would turn me into a grade VIII (that was as hard is got back then!) sending machine...

I sold the Chacal through a classified ad in the back of Climber and Hillwalker. It's quite quaint to think of now. The chap was from Newcastle and I was in Glasgow, so we arranged to meet up at Edinburgh train station to swap cash for ice tool!  

My first technical ice tool before even those was a Charlet Moser Blackbird. It was a thing of beauty, a banana pick in the modern style but on a one piece forged head, so ultimately the pick wasn't replaceable. I bought in "Olympus World" in Merry Hill, Dudley, where they clearly didn't know anything about climbing gear but still stocked some random stuff. It had been incorrectly priced at something like 40 quid. I remember the manager moaning he didn't actually have to sell it to me at that price, but he would "just this once". It seemed a bit weird as I don't think they had any other ice gear in the shop! 

Haha!  All good stories there Toby.  I had a pair of yellow Charlet Axars which served me well for quite a few years.  I had found one on the flanks of Aonach Dubh in Glen Coe one Summer, so marched into West Coast Outdoor Leisure in Fort William the next day to buy a matching hammer.  Yellow is definitely a good colour for ice tools.  The Tech Wings and Taakoons I thought looked good too.  I have a Taakoon but it's pretty heavy in the shaft and doesn't swing very nicely.

Will try to get a photo of all my axes over the last 50 years. 🥴 Still got them all. Stubai, Snowdon Mouldings, Mountain Technology, DMM... Still think the Mountain Technology axes were the nicest, best engineered and balanced tools I've had.

The hammer is a Terrordactyl.

Ah, thanks. It feels pretty heavy but I guess it needs to be. 

Long since lost it but I had a Macinnes Gully Hammer which I bought from the man himself, one of the earliest tools he made. It was a bit shorter than the standard axe and had no spike on the end of the shaft. A very heavy tool and great for braying in pegs. I used it to brake up some roof slabs on an outhouse in its later days.

A not so great item I had was a pair of 14 point crampons bought in 1966. They offered a huge range of adjustment to fit different  boot shapes/profiles. In use they had a major fault as even if the screws or nuts were cranked as tight as possible they became loose. I lost a front section of one whilst climbing on the Ben. I don't know where I bought them but I was living near F William at the time. My best guess at the name was perhaps  "avocin". I have not seen any since that time and guess they were not on the market long.

'Avcin' - designed by Dr France Avčin from Slovenia.

Pictured here - third from left, bottom row:

https://hermannhuber-de.translate.goog/fotos/steigeisen-generationen-versch...

A 1987 axe made by a Tibetan blacksmith from a crude drawing. Taken to Everest ABC, but not used in anger (thankfully!!).

Thank you Ian. Not being able to recall the name has been irritating me for a while. The front section I lost whilst climbing fell into Observatory Gully and seems to have been picked up by a climber who later that day was involved in an accident . Although badly hurt he descended into Glen Nevis and he was carrying the section of crampon I lost - info given to me by friends in the MR Team