Our guest today is a genuine legend and one of the pioneers of big-wall climbing. John Middendorf is a mechanical engineer, gear designer, researcher, writer, and teacher based in Tasmania. His climbing accomplishments pushed the limits of big-walls, adventure, and exploration throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. Most notably, he’s responsible for the first ascent of the East Face of Great Trango Tower, widely considered the largest and steepest continuous wall in the world at 4,400 feet, which he achieved with Xaver Bongard in 1992. The team used portaledges designed by Middendorf himself from his company A5 Adventures. Over the years, Middendorf has continued to refine his portaledge designs, with the D4 Designs which you can find on his website bigwalls.net, one of the first climbing websites in the world. Today, Middendorf has been engaged in an academic review of esoteric climbing journals of old to learn how the developments and advancements of gear have preceded leaps in progress thanks to the “influencers” of the day.

But first, yer friendly podcasting hosts are back on their usual bullshit after a few weeks of summer vacation.

Our final bit is some buddy spray from RunOut listener Andres Santiago. For spraying about his buddy, Andres is receiving a Yeti Yonder water bottle. If you’d like to submit spray, join us on Patreon.com/runoutpodcast to do so.

Show Notes

Check out bigwalls.net

Links to Mechanical Advantages, Vol 1 & 2: Note, these are 500mb PDFs. Download as files

Mechanical Advantage, Vol 1.

Mechanical Advantage, Vol 2.

Yosemite Climbing in the '80s by CVL

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RunOut #109: John Middendorf on How Climbing Gear Precedes Progress

The RunOut Podcast