Salathé Piton on Ebay

This is an authentic and very rare Salathé piton, the holy grail of climbing hardware collectibles. This sale is only for the very serious collector of climbing history. This piton was hand made by John Salathé and has his trademark Diamond P logo clearly stamped into the piton’s steel. This piton may well have been used on the first ascent of Sentinel Rock.

"(John) Salathé saw the need for tougher pitons- thin, reusable ones that could be forced farther into bottomed cracks and pounded into contorted cracks without buckling. He wanted a piton that would dominate the granite, not the other way around…Salathé simply used bars of 40/60 carbon and vanadium alloy steel, which he could have obtained easily and cheaply…The resulting hand-forged and heat-treated pitons, beautifully fashioned into the standard horizontal shape, were far tougher than the European pitons of the day. Most of these handsome objects bore an imprint, a tiny “P” inside a diamond, the logo of his Peninsula Wrought Iron Works."- Steve Roper Camp 4

The CW stamped under the diamond P is quite likely the initials of Chuck Wilts who may have been a onetime owner of this particular piton. Salathé sold some of his pitons, but climbers thought the fifty cent price was too high