What is this piece of equipment?

It´s a tubular ice piton, the commonest version was called a snarg. Useless by all accounts BUT they make good tent pegs.

US Army surplus, IIRC. Someone sold a case of 48 of them on Ebay once upon a time. And yes, useless for ice climbing by today's standards.

Snargs were not useless. In fact they were state of the art and allowed a lot of new routes to go in and terrain explored.

The ice piton pictured is not a Snarg; it's a solid tube and I believe was made by Salewa. The Snargs worked because the had a slot milled along their entire length with the exception of the 1/2" at the tip. This slot was designed to help clear the ice but also had the subtle effect of changing the shape of the Snarg from a cylinder to a long, slightly tapered cone. That is why when unscrewing a Snarg from the ice, they would be loose after a few turns.

Other companies kept copying the concept of a pound-in tube but none got it right: every one fo them were cylindrical and they all sucked.

Mal

Snargs were not useless. In fact they were state of the art and allowed a lot of new routes to go in and terrain explored.

The ice piton pictured is not a Snarg; it's a solid tube and I believe was made by Salewa. The Snargs worked because the had a slot milled along their entire length with the exception of the 1/2" at the tip. This slot was designed to help clear the ice but also had the subtle effect of changing the shape of the Snarg from a cylinder to a long, slightly tapered cone. That is why when unscrewing a Snarg from the ice, they would be loose after a few turns.

Other companies kept copying the concept of a pound-in tube but none got it right: every one fo them were cylindrical and they all sucked.

Mal