A5 Adventures 1987 and 1988 Pricelists

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Sep 14, 2022

My first gear catalogs I typed up in 1987 are a good reference for gear researchers (including me) to recall all the state of the art gear of the mid-1980s. I started A5 Adventures, Inc. company making hammers, but I also set up wholesale accounts with every possible climbing gear manufacturer to offer via mail-order the best and most specialised tools for efficient big wall climbing. A few tricks were being learned. I post these here as they are not anywhere else. I just found these old copies buried in some storage box and scanned them just now (2022):

1987 A5 Adventures Catalog

I really can’t say why I put a picture of my brother, Roxy, and his cousin Nels Paine, a photo I took ten years prior as a budding B&W photographer, with my own bathroom darkroom. Just thought it set the mood, perhaps.

Believe it or not, the above was all stored on a memory typewriter, which involved arcane methods to re-edit to update prices, etc, but once stored, I could automatically type out more. Soon later I invested several thousand dollars in a Apple Macintosh SE, my first computer and a huge amount of money in those days. John McMullen came on board and began creating great bigwall art, so I learned how to typeset using Apple programs, and we started to lay out new cool catalogs.

1988 A5 Adventures “Pre-Season” Pricelist:

Free A5 Buddy Bag to whoever guesses the route first in comments below.

wish I hadn’t given away all those magazines, they would be useful for the research I am doing now. I gave them to Bob Van Belle, not sure what ever happened to them.

I really liked how John would add all sorts of fun stuff, like the sketch of his hero Jack Moomaw.

Catalogs 1 and 2 (1990/1) and 1996 (our last year)

Several old A5 Catalogs can be seen on bigwalls.net at http://www.bigwalls.net/d4-design.html

Bigwalls.net vs. Bigwalls.com

Be sure to also visit bigwalls.com which are the top “How-to” videos (bigwalls.com used to direct to bigwalls.net, but as I never had any “commerical” on the .com domain, I only really need bigwalls.net, which still offers archival and design information, so I gave Ryan the bigwalls.com domain.

I don’t actually sell D4 portaledges anymore, but am helping a few other makers to produce the new designs.

Activist portaledges in action: Watch this video:

Activist homemade portaledges are helping defend the last of Tasmania’s old growth rainforests.

9 Comments

Jeffrey Paul Snyder

Dec 8, 2022Liked by John Middendorf

The ol' Flagstaff address... I'm of a different generation of climbers, getting to Flag in the mid- 2000s. One day Eric Meudt told me that A5 once made gear down the street so I did what any true nerd would do and went to that old address, now a vet clinic. There, still stuck in the cement sidewalk Infront of the building, is the mold of some old cam lobes (WireBliss??) and a carabineer, conjuring memories that weren't even mine. Thanks for sharing all this rad information.

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1 reply by John Middendorf