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. The Mixed pick is a blend between the two with similar angles to the Ice pick but only a small hammer plate and teeth reaching further down the shaft like the Race pick.Getting into ice climbing has never been easier, thanks to modern ice climbing tools. The Race pick features a sharp beak for grappling with rock along with more aggressive teeth both on the underside and topside of the pick. It also features a small hammer that adds the perfect amount of head weight for thin and brittle ice.
The Ice pick brings the tip 6 mm closer to the handle for performance similar to the popular X-All Mountain tool.
They are designed to provide solid sticks with minimal penetration making them the perfect choice for brittle ice and technical mixed terrain. All three picks feature the refined beak and tooth configuration CASSIN tools are known for. Climbers can further refine the X-Dream with micro-adjustable trigger finger ledges (choose from two inserts the X-Finger Small or the X-Finger Large that can be flipped over to adjust the position) and the X-Rest insert which adjusts the overall height of the handle. The Ice position drops the handle for a more natural swing. In the Dry position, the handle kicks upward for a more down and out pull. A quick turn of the allen bolt above the grip allows the tool to be switched between Dry and Ice positions by changing the angle of the handle in relation to the angle of the pick. This amazing ice axe not only features three different T rated picks for various terrain, but it also incorporates a patented adjustment system in the ergonomic handle to fine tune the swing and torque even further. The X-Dream combines two tools in one - a fully optimised tool for technical ice and an aggressive dry tooling machine.
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