Each tool comes with a roll of grip tape to customize the handle, and there are both hammer and adze versions available of the ice and mix picks. Removable pick weights allow for customization of the swing, and can be completely removed for extended drytooling sessions. The shaft’s extreme bend affords massive clearance over bulges and mushrooms, while the Ice pick displaces minimal ice and cleans easily. The handle is large but comfortable: roomy enough for cold-weather use with large gloves but not too spacious for hard mixed. The one-piece aluminum handle is fully rubber coated for optimal grip and control. The Switch boasts a hot-forged handle with full-strength pommels and an integrated full-strength clip-in point. Although hammering in a piton is difficult with such a curved shaft, the hammer is useful when tapping tools into thin ice or resetting in-situ piton placements. The X-Dreams can also be fitted with head weights and hammers which are worthy investments for this lightweight tool. And for those with small hands, Cassin sells handle-height inserts to accommodate a variety of users. When bringing the X-Dreams on an alpine climb with snow-bound or glaciated approaches, consider swapping out the handle for the X-Dream Alpine Handle the bottom spike will provide vastly more security than the default handle. Eventually, the accepted worldwide design for modern ice tools evolved as a combination with the pick steeply dropped like the Terror but curved upwards at the tip like a reversed Chouinard Climaxe hammer, which was known as the Banana pick. For several years, the Chouinard ice hammer and the Terrordactyl dominated the forefront of international ice climbing. The Terrordactyl was a short, all-metal ice tool with an aluminum alloy shaft and a high-quality pressed steel head i with an adze and steeply inclined serrated pick. The technique at the time was to hang on to ice pitons, driven into the ice above the leader’s head, which was both dangerous and insecure. Climbers had been seeking a better way of remaining in contact with steep and overhanging ice. Around the same time, Yvon Chouinard developed a short, wooden shafted ice hammer with a curved pick serrated on its bottom edge known as the Climaxe. In 1970, he invented the Terrordactyl or “Terror,” which had a global impact on hard winter climbing, and helped lead to an ice climbing revolution in the 1970s and ’80s.
In the 1940s, legendary Scottish climber Hamish MacInees designed the first all-metal ice axe. His early ice axes and ice hammers had a straight, slightly declined pick that were not sufficiently “dropped” for direct aid on vertical ice. His aluminium-alloy-shaft ice tools were manufactured for the public in the 1960’s, after three climbers died on Ben Nevis in Zero Gully when their wooden ice tools broke.
Fast forward to the beginning of the 20th century, when picks lengthened to about twice the length of the adze. In 1860, the adze was rotated horizontally. The two tools were later fused into a climbing-specific tool around 1840 that featured a vertical adze. In 1786, Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard made the first ascent of Mont Blanc using an alpenstock and small axe. The first-ever ice axe was the alpenstock, a long wooden pole with an iron spike tip, that was used by shepherds for travel on snowfields and glaciers in the Alps hundreds of years ago. Over 100 years of development has resulted in a variety ice tools designed for a range of winter climbing, such as pure ice lines, mixed routes and drytooling. Getting into ice climbing has never been easier, thanks to modern ice climbing tools.