Orizaba summit - check out the axe!

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Carrying just a rucksack from the UK, we needed to keep gear to a minimum. Though heavier than my normal 50cm axe, this borrowed tool served me well. Not only is it telescopic and extendable into a walking tool suitable for Orizaba's easy slopes, but the pick and circular adze can be unscrewed so it fits in the sack with the tent poles for plane transport. (And the pink hanging fabric was knitted by my 8yr old daughter as a scarf to keep me warm on Mexico's summits. Lightweight or what!) November 2008.

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Dmitry Pruss

The scarf

Voted 10/10

you meant it's this thingie hanging from the eyelet of the axe? Now that's lightweight :)))

Posted Dec 15, 2008 7:46 pm

Ejnar Fjerdingstad

A very

Voted 10/10

ingenious axe!

Posted Dec 16, 2008 11:31 am


	cp0915	Re: A very
	Voted 10/10	No doubt! Good stuff.
		Posted Dec 17, 2008 4:33 pm

vanman798

Axe

Hasn't voted

I was wondering about the the Adze. What is the reason it is circular?

Posted Dec 17, 2008 4:51 pm


	parky	Re: Axe
	Hasn't voted	Good question. The adze unit connects with, and unscrews from, the pick. It does have a sort of locking mechanism, requiring quite a firm twist to unlock and unscrew it. You then have to bash the half-unscrewed adze on the floor to free the pick unit from its chamfered housing. I'd guess from an engineering point of view that it made more sense to make a circular unit that was going to screw in. This would avoid the need for a flat adze to be correctly aligned in the horizontal plane throughout the life of the tool. I'd hate to have to cut away at ice with a tool that wasn't correctly aligned to the swing of the shaft. But as it was, all I used the adze for was chippping hard ice to melt in our stove on Orizaba's high camp! Am I making any sense?
		Posted Dec 17, 2008 6:16 pm