As a brand, Petzl was born in the darkness. Their story began with founder Fernand Petzl’s passion for caving, back in the mid-1930s. Out of that passion, Petzl started to design innovative solutions for ascending, descending, belaying and moving about underground. This included pioneering headlamps and rope safety equipment. But alpinists soon discovered that what worked below the earth also worked above it, and Petzl kit was quickly co-opted by climbers, mountaineers and skiers.

Today, Petzl remains one of the leading technical brands in all these fields, still devoted to one mission: to access the inaccessible. The product range is split into two core categories: lighting – which includes some of the world’s most advanced head torches; and verticality – highly technical equipment designed for those venturing into the world’s loftiest mountain ranges as well as the globe’s deepest, darkest places.