John Middendorf Is Rewriting the History of Climbing Equipment

The first time I met John Middendorf was in 1993 when he stayed with my wife Ann and me in our tiny Aspen apartment. John was visiting Aspen to lecture on a climb he’d done with Xaver Bongard the previous year, the "Grand Voyage" on the Great Trango Tower, a 4,000-plus-foot shield of granite in Pakistan’s Karakorum.

Back then, John was running A5, his own company (later bought by The North Face) and dabbling in some very wild adventures in Zion. We enjoyed his lecture, hung out, and the following morning bagged an unclimbed desert tower (Balanced Rock in Colorado National Monument…maybe “tower” is an overstatement…).

In 1999, he wrote an article for Ascent , that old Sierra Club journal that by 1999 was being published by the American Alpine Club. It was an article about climbing gear.

Years later, John moved to Tasmania and began doing some serious research on gear. It bubbled and squeaked for years, then he started really digging in. Now, he’s turning gear history on its head and upsetting many notions that seemed standard acceptance for decades, and he’s finding remarkable things while having fun.

Even the legendary Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka recently chimed in on John’s research.

Here, I’ve done a Q&A with Deucey, as he’s known (Middendorf = Dusseldorf = Deucey … yeah, apparently that makes sense to some people), but before we get there….

Christian Beckwith , who was an editor at Alpinist in the early years, said this of John’s research:

“Often, our understanding of history relies on secondary research: stories that have been passed down through time by generations of writers who have taken the versions they’ve heard as the “truth” and dressed then up in their own re-telling. The result is a bit like the game of telephone, where the original facts may or may not align with the story that passes for common knowledge today.

“John does the hard work of primary research. He traces the stories we’ve long accepted at face value back to their origins and reevaluates them in light of what he has already determined to be true. The result is the most comprehensive study of tools and their impact on the evolution of climbing yet done.”

Katie Ives , Beckwith’s successor at Alpinist , added this:

“John’s research on early twentieth-century women alpinists is particularly significant. Past climbing history books have often relegated women’s ascents to separate chapters or sidebars, implying that they weren’t part of the larger development of the pursuit. In contrast, John’s workplaces women’s contributions at the very center of climbing history. “Women are often portrayed as minor players [in past books and articles], if not ignored entirely,” he notes on his website, “But when you look a little closer, women climbers have been at the top of the game in every major period of climbing and mountaineering history.”

“Again and again, John’s collections of writings, images, and archival materials provide concrete evidence of women’s involvement and leadership in groundbreaking innovations and climbs—from Beatrice Tomasson’s first ascent of the south face of the Marmolada in 1901 (a “milestone of big wall climbing” that John compares to the Nose of El Capitan/Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La) to Marie Langer who ran the first store devoted to climbing gear in Vienna during the early 1900s and whose catalogues depicted women leading routes. He demonstrates how Miriam Underhill and other women of her time helped introduce pitoncraft and other tools and techniques to the US.

“My hope is that John's work and that of other researchers who study the same time period—such as Anna Saroldi and Sallie Greenwood—can help bring about a much-needed paradigm shift in how we understand the history of climbing and restore to these women alpinists the recognition they deserve.”

Katie’s not wrong. A few years back, Robert Underhill, often thought of as the godfather of the belay in North America, was outed as an anti-semite. However, John's research has shown that Robert’s wife Miriam Underhill was every bit as important as her husband, and perhaps more important, in advancing the sport of climbing in the Americas.

Thank you, Christian and Katie.

Deucey, you’re on deck….

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Powder: Why did you start this massive research project?

Middendorf: Like many things, it started out slow. Mostly I wanted to revise my 1999 Ascent article, as I had discovered a few more interesting aspects to the history I grew up with and had some time to add them to my online version. Then I realized what a great opportunity there was, as when I researched my original 1999 article, over many weeks of late nights with [Allen] Steck and [Steve] Roper ganging up on me and shredding my efforts, all in good fun, but they really did help to take my writing to a better level—with not so many random thoughts and concepts thrown in, and the structure they helped me develop for the piece I couldn't have done on my own. But most of my research was flipping through journals and books at the American Alpine Club Library, recently moved to Golden. But since then, I also have come across all sorts of new imagery which helps tell the story, as well as a fantastic boom in resources, being able to access digital libraries from other countries.

I notice a lot of histories are centric to the author's experience and local access of information, so being able to query the world’s journals is probably the thing that kept it so interesting, as it was exciting to discover so many references in the primary sources that told a new story from a tools and techniques perspective. My 1999 piece covered the broad strokes, but the detail was very interesting, too, especially from the engineered tools perspective.

Powder: Has it been a linear experience or has one strand of research caused you to go back and look at earlier developments in gear?

Middendorf: I mostly considered the state-of-the-art climbs of each era and delved deep into the tools and techniques used. It is an ongoing progression, and as Lito [Tejada-Flores] reminds us, there are many games climbers play, all with their own tool and skillset. My work focuses mostly on big wall techniques, but until recently were pretty universal to all climbing disciplines.

Powder: You've done two volumes so far. How many do you think there will be?

Middendorf: I am working on Trango history now, which essentially will be Volume 3 of the tools for wild vertical research, as the Trangos were an international arena of state-of-the-art climbs, and there are great stories as well as the thread of technology.

Powder: How many hours have you put into this?

Middendorf: I spent about a year each on the two published volumes, optimally with two full days a week to work on my writing, Recently I had a small, heated studio built on our property, which makes for a nice writing shed, so now get about 3 days a week.

Powder: How many mistakes have you found by previous researchers?

Middendorf: A few. Mostly, there were some misconceptions about how tools were used in prior historic tomes.

Powder: You're getting accolades left and right for your work. Are the accolades appropriate?

Middendorf: I am getting great feedback from climbers all over the world. I consider my work peer-reviewed, as I post and query online, and can correct in real time. I do really appreciate the feedback and have put the best ones on the back covers of the printed volumes (available from Amazon).

Powder: What's been the toughest line of research?

Middendorf: Sometimes it becomes apparent that some prized legends in the climbing world aren't really as speccy as touted, often because there was some other man or woman who was doing the same thing or better and never fully acknowledged, sometimes by their own choice. But there was bias in some of the histories, notably in the 1930s with bias that still persists today in more recent books.

Powder: What are the weirdest things you've found?

Middendorf: I really enjoy thinking about guys like Winkler soloing hard 5.7s, with his rope and hook to help the downclimbs, a solo art that died out when fixed abseil anchors became more common. I was amazed at all the cross over with the river and climbing communities in the time of Leonard and Brower and the height of the Sierra Club, and having been part of both worlds, its interesting how the river and the climbing communities view the same heroes differently.

Powder: What are the big a-hahs (discoveries) you've found in this research?

Middendorf: Ah ha! I can find peace and motivation to dig into a sport I love by simply sitting in front of a computer ;). No really, I need to get out more.

Powder: I find gear history fascinating as do thousands of readers out there. That's why Alpinist always had a column on the subject. You've approached publishers but have not been successful yet. Why do you think that is?

Middendorf: Probably because it would be a massive editing job. My books are simply a collection of posts which have a common thread. Not everyone's cup of tea, but other researchers and historians have been appreciative, so that's a pretty good result.

Powder: Why do you think people should read your work?

Middendorf: If they are interested in the development of tools, techniques, and the climbs made possible by them, I hope they would find my work interesting.

Powder: Why is gear history important?

Middendorf: New tools are always fun. And they bring about a rise of standards. Is the rise of standards important? If so, then the gear history probably is too. Anyway, it is fun for me as I also have helped develop new tools for more efficient climbs.

Powder: Once you're done with gear, what's your next line of work?

Middendorf: I'm retired, but still imagine getting back on the chalk face for another spell (mostly retired high school teaching since Covid crash but still fully registered). I still enjoy tinkering with folding single point suspended weatherproof tents, so will probably make a few more prototypes from time to time. Keep doing what I can to help slow the decimation of Tasmania's forests. Go on more adventures. Work out more....

Powder: What else?

Middendorf: One thing I think important to add as useful information to others who might want to do deep research. The online international mountaineering journals are essential to search in various languages, but a lot my information also came from some very old published books, and I did spend a lot of money buying books from AbeBooks. It is now a nice collection of almost every technique book in the past 100 years, and always happy to find some instance of some tool for some researchers and send scans. A lot of the old books are also online, one of the good online libraries is https://www.hathitrust.org/ .

Powder: Thanks, John. Next time in Colorado, holler!

John’s books can be bought here:

https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Advantage-Vertical-Middendorf-Climber/dp/B0CGZ2S58J/ref=sr_1_2?crid=30W5PZFX1T4T0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.kNhrk8879-WprYNsT1q2Be7GdzZn4_UtHeAsjYLyhc0nGxThckv5lBx_IIlsnLYN_5YsXLFrSs8zbL61Xy8yGn-Z2SE4GVUk-KBgTeY9UVtU2TNsv8Vrq43HmFhqD23hRGet1-p424IY3ar72Ns1KVRStUASzVsnkjNPYXv6q88RydOL5XWx67CAK4JuVZBH_EQ8hm5FUrWqQhvd2x0vtW5Coc2qyVeU3VT0QC-Yy2s.pwyYEGMTcEGYVJN6LM3NUroDG2CqmvGU73Atau8smhs&dib_tag=se&keywords=John+Middendorf&qid=1716244406&s=books&sprefix=john+middendorf%2Cstripbooks%2C161&sr=1-2

And here:

https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Advantage-Vertical-Middendorf-Climber/dp/B0CH26LTFM/ref=pd_bxgy_thbs_d_sccl_1/146-4306897-8750430?pd_rd_w=Bgvk4&content-id=amzn1.sym.4e8180d8-1c12-4df8-af99-b6dc78fc0026&pf_rd_p=4e8180d8-1c12-4df8-af99-b6dc78fc0026&pf_rd_r=4N4X8JNKQFZX1XK2CWXZ&pd_rd_wg=lqoyw&pd_rd_r=2c3dc35b-6daa-4927-ae8b-ecf4afa99c2b&pd_rd_i=B0CH26LTFM&psc=1

Here's a fun, completely US-centric video about wall climbing:

See you out there!