On every ‘real’ exped­i­tion there need to be smart modi­fic­a­tions on the equip­ment. In our case the ice tools had to bite the dust. They got addi­tional wings wich con­ver­ted them into real multi-​tools. God what can you all do with them: dig holes, sit on it, bury scat, blind pen­guins with sun­light, go sledging… Our climb­ing elite has hopes to drill through over­hanging cor­nices near the sum­mit — let them do, as long as I do not get hit by the stuff they dig out. Fur­ther­more, you can hit your head pretty good with those things while climbing.

Okay, if you came all the way until here you prob­ably want to know all the details. Well, then here you have the tech­nical details for poten­tial cor­nice drill tech­ni­cians (moth­ers and kids can stop read­ing here): plank sheet on it, screw it tight, done — ‘Keep it simple’. Sur­face of the wing is approx­im­ately 150 x 100 mm at 152 g addi­tional weight.

Some joy­ful ped­ants might object and say that such secur­ity rel­ev­ant tools should also provide safety against bend­ing and shift­ing. Well, this won­der­ful con­struc­tion is provid­ing these fea­tures basic­ally auto­mat­ic­ally. The coun­ter­sink screw is pulling the 2mm alu­minium plank sheet into the over­sized holes of the ice tool when thightened. For that pur­pose the tool got addi­tional bevels to ensure the con­struc­tion reaches the so called form clos­ure to pre­vent bend­ing and shift­ing at least in the hands of the aver­age climber. Fur­ther­more, sta­bil­ity of the plank sheet increases due to the bolted fasten­ing because it neatly fol­lows the curvature of the mattock.

In prin­ciple this should also work with mat­tocks that have elong­ated holes or big­ger key­ways. If applic­able an addi­tional plank sheet needs to be moun­ted as coun­ter­part. Well, you will make it — worst case you have to stop just beneath the cornice.