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Ozymandias trip report (on Supertopo)... 22-Mar-2017 At 6:23:11 PM simey

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Last week I got the opportunity to climb with big wall legend John Middendorf at Mt Buffalo.

For those of you that aren't familiar with his name, John was prolific in the US in the 80s and 90s where he designed and made a lot of new climbing equipment (particularly portaledges) under his label A5. His resume of big walls also includes what was the biggest, big wall of all, when he and Xaver Bongard spent 15 days in one push establishing Grand Voyage on Great Trango in the Karakoram in 1992.

John's involvement in big wall climbing has been pretty non-existant the last couple of decades, particularly after moving to Tasmania with his wife Jeni to start a family. But last year during a family trip to Mt Arapiles, John was re-inspired to design a new portaledge after someone pointed out to him that no one was making lightweight models like he had done decades earlier. The end result of all this is the D4 portaledge which has number of new design elements and is considerably lighter than current models on the market.

John was keen to test it in the field and apparently I had suggested to him that we go and do an aided ascent of Ozymandias Direct (I had clearly forgotten that I hate aid climbing).

Here is John's story of the climb...

http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Ozymandias-Direct-Mt-Buffalo-Australia/t13126n.html