Deadman

Original Vintage Mountain Technology Deadman

Pentagonal shaped deadman with 10 holes.

Hugh McNicol set up a wee workshop down in Glasgow around 1979, the idea being to manufacture climbing equipment. Unfortunately, the early attempts were a bit of a disaster as his first batch of drive in ice screws broke when being hammered in, leaving Hugh with several hundred unusable screws. (see related items)
Undaunted, Hugh changed the name of his company from Mountain Engineering to Mountain Technology and moved to Glencoe in 1981, opening a little factory which primarily made ice-axes, the only ones made in Scotland at the time. The business went from strength to strength throughout the 1980's and 1990's but Hugh was of an engineering background rather than a businessman, and unfortunately, the money men got the better of him in 2004 and he reluctantly closed down the business. Having married Australian, Mary Rosengran, in 1992, Hugh moved to Australia in 2007 where he died prematurely in 2012.
One of the last items that Hugh produced before the business closed down were deadman - one of which we have here in the collection. Deadmen were used initially for anchoring dog teams in Antarctica ( though the principal had probably been used for centuries) and Scottish mountaineer, John Cunningham, is credited with their first use as anchors in the snow for mountaineering. Denny Moorhouse of Clog Equipment made the first commercial ones back in the 1960's and it could be that Hugh McNicol made the last since for some reason they have gone out of fashion.

Made in Japan