The climbing and mountaineering community has always been full of hackers. On my side of the pond there have been Don Whillans (Whillans harness, Whillans Box

The climbing and mountaineering community has always been full of hackers. On my side of the pond there have been Don Whillans (Whillans harness, Whillans Box tent for Himalayan faces), Hamish McInnes (Terrordactyls - the first drop pick ice axes) and Laurent Grivel (12 point crampon) amongst others. Maybe the greatest climbing hacker was Andrew Irvine (who disappeared high on Everest in 1924 with George Leigh Mallory). Mallory was the greatest climber of his generation, and over the years there has been questioning on why he took the relatively inexperienced Andrew Irvine with him on a summit bid (rather than say the vastly more experienced Neville Odell). But Irvine was an engineering genius. Every night he was rebuilding the oxygen sets, learning from the experience of the previous day to make them better - to give them the oxygen they needed to survive at that altitude.