Word: piton
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...climbing alpine peaks, when there won't be any belay from above and there isn't any choice of easy routes. When they reach this stage, they will travel in pairs tied together by a rope. One man will tie himself to the cliff wall by wedging a "piton" or spike into a crack, while the other man climbs. Sometimes mountain-climbers have to drill holes in the rock and screw in expansion bolts to conquer a difficult cliff...
...party reached a shallow ledge on the almost-vertical face of Dent du Geant. While the other three waited below, McNear continued up the face and hammered a thin piton--a metal spike commonly used by mountain-climbers for support--into a crack in the granite rock. Then he fastened his rope to the piton and continued up the wall...
Suddenly he lost his balance. The force of the fall pulled the piton out of the crack. A vertical razor of rock, jutting up from the ledge, cut McNear's rope and he continued down...