Vintage Wood Chouinard Climbing Piton Alpine Hammer
metal, wood, leather
11.5" L handle x 7.25" L head
© Vintage Winter

A wonderfully preserved wooden handle piton hammer by Chouinard complete with a vintage leather leash.  Perfect condition, beautiful patina and still usable. Made in USA.

The Alpine Hammer is good for cleaning moss and ice out of cracks, removing nuts, placing and removing ice pitons, and chopping steps at close quarters. However, its special design feature is its use as an ice dagger for hard water ice. For this purpose it has a long, narrow, drooped pick with teeth.

Over the years the Alpine Hammer has gone through five major design changes. This model has a full set of teeth on the pick next to the shaft for climbing waterfalls where the ice is often thin and the pick breaks through to water or air. We have also beefed up the head to improve its balance and graduated the taper of the pick to make it stick better in brittle ice.

Climbing in Alaska - The Yukon Gold Trail.