John Middendorf

Duncan Critchley:

I first met and climbed with John in 1984 when he was part of Yosemite’s climber search and rescue team. He had had a comfortable upbringing and had just gained an Engineering degree from Stanford but passing though Yosemite on the way to starting a conventional career he had somehow got distracted... He suggested we do a push ascent of Zodiac which I turned down for a date with Sunkist instead. I slightly regret this as it would have been great fun and I’d have learned a lot from him. Zodiac was still considered quite a hard route at the time and I didn't have John’s imagination to see the feasibility of doing a big nail-up in this style. After an accident on Sunkist my gear was impounded by the rangers as collateral for medical bills (no insurance of course). John made sure my haul bag mysteriously vanished from the rescue cache before I did a runner!

In his two and a half years as a Valley local John did over 40 walls including several new big free and aid routes. He didn't do Zodiac but did manage The Shield in a push which is possibly even more impressive. This spell came to an end when he nearly died in a storm on the south face of Half Dome in winter 1986. This encouraged him to take a break from Yosemite, move to warm and dry Arizona, and design and bring to market big wall gear. These included the A5 portaledge, a relatively storm-proof and sturdy design, a direct result of Half Dome experience. This was not the first to the market, Jeff Lowe and Mike Graham had produced ledges in the 1970s sold to friends and friends-of-friends but it was the first properly sorted design that was widely available. Like early bouldering mats the A5 ledge facilitated a boom in an activity previously reserved for a lunatic fringe and also encouraged that fringe to greater lunacy. The A5 design lives on in contemporary models, now bloated like a computer operating system.

John continued to enjoy climbing, taking his skills to Zion and the SW desert. After a lot of hard work A5 Adventures had become a successful small enterprise by the mid 1990s. John entered into partnership with The North Face in order to have access to the latest and best materials, leading to A5 being absorbed completely in 1996. Not long after, TNF management underwent some upheavals [legally uncontentious version] resulting in him being let go from his own company. At the same time as all this John was continuing to pioneer hard ascents culminating in the epic Grand Voyage on Great Trango Tower.

His pay-off from TNF sent him off around the world. He eventually settled in Tasmania. In part he felt this was somewhere more likely to weather the climate crisis, the probable effects of which he was well aware of more than 25 years ago. His growing interest in environmentalism led him to revisit portaledges as a vehicle for direct action against logging the Tasmanian rainforests. More on this here: http://bigwalls.net/download/climbingzinejm.pdf Characteristically these were open source designs with very little thought on trying to make a buck.

It was a surprise and pleasure to bump into him completely by chance in Joshua Tree in 2005 and climb with him again. Much easier stuff this time! We’ve been corresponding ever since, about gear and big wall history and other stuff. I was happy to make a very small contribution through editing and proofreading to his recent books.

Most of all I remember his generosity of spirit. [5]

Mike Turner:

In 1992 I was travelling out of Torres Del Paine with Louise on a rickety old bus. I sat down in the dusty bus next a tall chap and scruffy top. He was travelling with his girlfriend. We got chatting and he mentioned he climbed. A bit! We were buzzing after climbing ‘Caveman’ a first ascent on Ceurnos Norte a 800m trad line. So we talked climbing. I actually explained to him what big wall climbing was! Haha the guy was Big Wall Climbing. Lots of laughs and John not letting on and we all ended up partying in Natalas that evening. We had absolutely no idea who John was so was his natural friendly understated persona. A bit of climbing ! Really he was chilling after climbing the Grand Voyage the worlds hardest route. From that day on we kept in touch fellow Big Wall geeks! I have spent almost a whole yr of my life living on Johns Portsledges A5 then D4. [3]

References

[1] https://www.commonclimber.com/john-middendorf.html

[2] https://bigwalls.net/download/middendorfclimbs.pdf

[3] https://www.facebook.com/mike.t.turner.7/posts/pfbid06vX291dQvkD8MBXAZ6r8qKhcWnYnyWyMNB7aEtzVsxEtuD4Yih5cJZ5qotksL2Y8l

[4] https://bigwalls.net/download/mtnreview.pdf

[5] https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,18343.msg695649.html#msg695649

[6] https://www.climbing.com/people/remembering-john-middendorf/