THE NEW ICE AGE TECH TALK

Creative Director Dave Whitlow began working in our Liverpool store as a Saturday lad in 1975. Since then he’s witnessed first hand the astonishing evolution of ice climbing – and the equipment that’s made it possible.

How did the earliest ice axes you sold work?

The adze [shovel] would cut steps. The spike element – the pick – on the other side was really an arresting tool. If you slipped you'd put your weight over the pick and that would break your fall. The length and the spike on the bottom was essentially a walking stick. It was a development of the very earliest 'alpenstocks', which were long wooden poles with a spike on the end, used by the first people to climb Mont Blanc and the other big alpine peaks.

With an ice axe like the classic Stubai Aschenbrenner you could probably climb ice of up to about 60 degrees, and cut steps into it. But it became really difficult, and as climbers started to want to climb steeper ice, the tools had to develop to facilitate that.

What's the idea of curved picks?

When you swing it and stick it in the ice, it stays there. It grips. You can pull on it and it actually extracts quite easily as well. Alongside crampons, it enabled people to use what they call a front pointing technique. Prior to that they would be cutting steps and crabbing sideways. Now you're literally facing the ice with four points of contact; ice axe, ice axe, step, step. It was a radical advance, and stepcutting became a thing of the past.

Which brands pioneered this movement?

The Chouinard Zero made a big noise. [Patagonia founder] Yvon Chouinard actually visited Fort William in the 70s and climbed with local climbers like Hamish MacInnes, and the influence went both ways. They were at the cutting edge of what you could do with winter climbing, constantly questioning what were really quite primitive tools in those days. Chouinard's approach was to curve the existing tools that were out there and ultimately come up with his own ice axe, but Hamish MacInnes had a different route: he developed an all-metal tool called the Terrordactyl. It was much much shorter, 40-45cm long, and had a dramatically inclined straight pick. Both tools had their advantages and disadvantages. The Terrordactyl was particularly good at Scottish mixed climbing, where you're in very confined areas –often iced-up gullies – and the terrain includes a lot of frozen turf and shallow placements. The downside was it rapped your knuckles quite