Brothers Danny and Mike Giovale are both experienced mountain climbers and had no problems on the way up an intense climb in the rigorous Italian Dolomites. But on the way down, Danny slipped in a steep, snow-filled gully. “I couldn’t stop,” he says. “As my velocity increased, I thought, I seriously could die.” He didn’t, luckily: He flew off a snow bumper into water that had warmed on the rocks.
He told other adventurers about his fall, and he learned he wasn’t alone. “Almost everyone, without exception, either had a similar experience or knew someone who had,” Danny says. There was a tool out there to help them: crampons, the metal spikes that attach to the bottom of boots. But at the time, the only ones available were heavy and…
