If I took a set of tires with 60,000 miles on them back to the tire shop to get replaced, I'd get laughed at—same is true for climbing gear. Perhaps it's a legacy thing. Yes, back in the day some climbing gear did last longer, because it was designed and manufactured to be more robust and consequently was heavier and ultimately didn't perform as well. But even back in the day, climbing gear had a useable lifespan. Also, as the climbing standards increase, we're torquing our picks and crampons, whipping on sketchy pins and cams and just generally being way harder on our gear.
But just as you can buy beefy, all-terrain radials that last longer than high-performance race tires, you can buy rugged climbing gear that'll last longer, but at a cost of weight and performance. You can also purchase more specialized, lighter gear, but it generally won't be quite as burly. It's up to each individual climber to make the choice and understand the possible ramifications of these decisions.
One last thing: my job at BD is to manage a team of engineers that test and break gear all day, every day. We test all gear (not just BD, but all our competitor's gear, too) and do so scientifically and objectively. Yes, we monitor the blogs and chat rooms for trends, information and what is being discussed, and are constantly surprised by both the nature of the commentary (sometimes factual and sometimes not) and the tendency of most blog/forum readers to accept everything as true. As a caveat, don't believe everything you read online—if you do, I have a friend in Nigeria who will wire you $100,000 and all you have to do is send him your bank account information.
Read on for some objective test data on the realities regarding the fatigue life of some of the products that continually pop up. We'll start off with ice gear, then in subsequent posts I'll discuss rock climbing and mountain gear. First up, ice tool picks.