Vertical caving terminology and methods > Rigging methods and equipment
A metal wedge-shaped anchor that is hammered into a crack in the rock, and remains in place using only friction. They can be used to clip a carabiner to, or to tie a rope to directly, depending on the design. These belong to the climbing world, and should not be used for SRT. However, they are used for traditional aid climbing.
Though not used any more, pitons have the honour of being the oldest anchor used for caving. The original pitons were simply wedges of wood that were hammered into a crack. These had been used by miners for centuries as a way to attach tools or pipes to a wall, and they will have used them while exploring caves, but it is not known if these were ever used for load bearing purposes. Mountaineers used wooden wedges for load bearing purposes at some point around 1850. In 1875, American climber George G. Anderson used eyebolts held in by wooden wedges which he manually drilled into the rock, during his climb of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. The eyebolts could have been used as pitons, since they were a nail with an eyelet, but he chose to drill holes instead. Metal pitons started out as basic nails used in Alpine mountaineering, used only in the event that there were no suitable naturals to attach a rope to, exclusively for descending. The first known record of their use for a load bearing anchor as an attachment for a rope is by French mountaineer Jean-Estéril Charlet-Straton, during an 1879 ascent of Petit Dru in the French Alps, though it is highly likely that others had already used them for that purpose, without documenting it. A "pin" piton with an eyelet was used by Otto Ewald Ufer on Talwächter in Germany, in 1881. At that time, they were known as "iron stanchions" in Britain, and "des coins ou pointes d'acier" (iron wedges or spikes) in French. The vast majority were drilled into solid rock rather than being hammered into an existing fracture. In 1890, they described by Austrian mountaineer Robert H. Schmitt, as being hammered into a natural crack in the rock, to descend from a mountain in the Tyrol region of Austria. They were referred to as "Mauerhaken" meaning " wall hook", a name which continued to be used in German, but there was no description of their design, apart from being made of wrought iron. They were treated as standard climbing equipment, not something new.
By 1893, they were shown by British mountaineer Claude Wilson as being made from a round nail with an eyelet at one end, where he also first used the term "piton". They were very clearly described as being hammered into an existing natural fracture. Pitons were then most heavily used in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria and Italy, and The Dolomites of Italy, where they would typically be hammered into existing natural fractures, with the start of the 1900s seeing a surge in their usage. By 1905, pitons with integrated lose rings for threading the rope through, appeared in Germany and Austria, but they were generally despised by older mountaineers in Southern Germany. In 1908, pitons were sold commercially, possibly for the first time, by Sporthaus Mizzi Langer in Vienna, Austria, though the design was not shown. Paul Preuss, who was one of the harshest critics of aid climbing and the use of any artificial climbing aids, died in 1913, after a fall that was caused by him not having adequate protection. Along with other notable accidents, this proved to be a turning point in the acceptance of pitons. Pitons were called "le clou" (nails) in French by 1916, and "piton de fer" (iron spike) by 1918, at which point their use in the mountains for climbing was despised by many French mountaineers. Just 10 years later, French mountaineers were embracing them.
The first flat pitons with an integrated eyelet that was forged in a single piece were designed by Austrian mountaineer Hans Fiechtl in 1920, and made by a blacksmith in Münster, Germany. This design was recommended in a 1920 German and Austrian climbing newsletter article by Hermann Amanshauser (later a Nazi SS officer), as a way to connect a rope (via a carabiner) as part of a safety upgrade for climbing, inspired by yet another climbing accident caused by inadequate protection. The new design became known in German as the "Fiechtlhaken", meaning "Fiechtl hook", and could be purchased in a design for vertical cracks, and a design for horizontal cracks. They appeared with that name, and the older type with an integrated ring was referred to in 1921 as a "Ringhaken", meaning "ring hook", in Franz Nieberl's book Das Klettern im Fels. Mizzi Langer's pitons, referred to as the "Mizzi Langerhaken", were shown as having a long, flat blade pointing into a vertical crack in the rock, then a 90° bend producing a flat face hanging down parallel to the rock, a rather odd design most closely resembling an angled tent peg, with the two sides squashed together. The hole passed through that flat face, pointing towards the rock, and will have caused the load to be placed some distance away from the rock, creating a lot of leverage. In 1922, ring pitons and Fiechtl pitons were described as being 12-15 cm long, in Anwendung Des Seiles, published by the Bavarian section of the German Alpine Club. In 1924, German mountaineers Willo Welzenbach and Fritz Riegle used pitons hammered into ice to secure a rope while climbing Weisbachhorn in Austria, removing them afterwards by chipping away the ice. In 1925, the summer catalogue from Sporthaus Schuster in München, Germany, listed a serrated piton specifically designed for use with ice, branded with their own ASMü brand. They called it an "Eishaken", meaning "ice hook", and it could be considered an ancestor of the ice screw, but it was far more prone to causing the ice to break. (The name had previously been used by some authors to refer to ice axes in the previous century, but those had normally been called "Eispickel" meaning "ice pick" since around 1875.) In 1926, Anwendung Des Seiles described ice pitons as being 20-25 cm long.
Pitons were probably first used in caves in the Grenoble region of France. Pierre Chevalier describes in Subterranean Climbers (1951), how members of the French mountaineering/caving club Les Jarrets d'Acier, including Henri More, were using a "ring bolt" or a "ring welded into the shaft edge" as anchors somewhere between 1924 and 1932. According to the same book, these were pitons with a ring attachment, which were inserted into a hole created using a star drill. They were used for canyoning in the same area in 1933. French caver Guy Labour used pitons in the Dent de Crolles system in 1937, and subsequent exploration in that system by many cavers then used pitons extensively. In 1948, hollow ice pitons were developed in Germany, but they did not have a screw thread. Pitons were the cause of a caving accident in 1941 where a piton came out and caused Fernand Petzl to fall down a pitch during the exploration of the Dent de Crolles. British mountaineers continued to discourage their use for mountaineering in the 1940s, as they encouraged poor climbing style, relying on equipment. In 1944, French caver Henry P. Guérin stated that pitons might be made from steel or duraluminium. In 1947, American climber John Salathé made the first hard steel pitons, which could be hammered into harder rock, last a lot longer, and were more likely to have enough grip to be trusted.
British cavers were using pitons by the late 1940s for traverse lines. Swiss mountaineer Erich Friedli developed the first threaded ice screw in 1960. Austrian mountaineer Sebastian "Wastl" Mariner designed the first commercial version for Stubai/Marwa in 1961, which was more like a P-hanger with a corkscrew on the end. By around 1962, twisted ice pitons were being made by Steidle (presumably in West Germany), which were simply a lightly twisted rod, which would have provided a little extra grip, but were too minimal to work as an ice screw. These are sometimes mistakenly shown as being a precursor to ice screws. During the 1960s, a hybrid ice piton that was hammered in, but had a screw thread that allowed it to be screwed back out, was developed in the Soviet Union. Several designs were then produced in other countries, some of which could also be used in frozen soil. German mountaineer Hermann Huber working at Salewa developed the first hollow ice screw in 1964, and although it was missing the convenient handle which features on many modern ice screws, this is the first ice screw that actually looks and functions like a modern ice screw, with cutting teeth and an external screw thread, on a hollow tube. The use of pitons with caving continued until spits were developed in the early 1970s. Even during the 1970s, the first SRT instruction manuals to include Alpine rigging still showed how to use pitons. During the 1970s, American climber Greg Lowe developed a hollow version of the ice pitons that could be hammered in and screwed back out, called a Snarg.
This history section only covers pitons. This article also has a detailed history of many of the other devices and techniques that are used for vertical caving.
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