Have you ever been to Courmayeur? The Italian town enjoys a spectacular setting, at the foot of arguably Mont Blanc’s most impressive side, with the intimidating black tower of Aiguille Noire clawing at the sky towards the white dome of Western Europe’s highest mountain. It was in Courmayeur, 1909, that English intellectual and mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein handed his drawing of the original crampon design to a local blacksmith. The blacksmith’s name was Henri Grivel.
Fast forward over a century and Grivel’s name is still the most famous name in crampon manufacture, especially in Europe. In the intervening years, Henri’s son Laurent went on to invent front points in 1929, an innovation without which there’d be no ice climbing. Then, in 2003, the brand solved the issue of snow build up between the spikes with its anti-balling plates. Grivel continues to be at the forefront of crampon design to this day.
