Fifty Years of Mountain Designs

When it comes to the Australian adventure scene, there are few institutions older than Wild Magazine, established in 1981. One of those few, however, is Mountain Designs, and 2025 marks a significant milestone for the company: its 50th birthday. It’s an achievement that speaks of the brand’s passion, of its dedication to quality, and of the incredible vision and drive of its founder Rick White.

Rick was a rock climber from Southeast Queensland who, from the 1960s, began putting up daring, bold routes. “By the 70s,” says Tim Macartney-Snape, Wild columnist and the first Aussie (along with Greg Mortimer) to reach the summit of Everest, “Rick was one of Australia’s foremost climbers.” In 1973, he was the first Aussie to climb El Cap in Yosemite, and in ’74, the first Aussie, along with Rob Staszewski, to climb Fitzroy’s North Face in Patagonia.

Rick realised that adventurers like himself needed quality equipment. In Australia at the time, that was hard to find. It led to him founding, in 1969, a climbing-gear company called Infinity Equipment. The following year, he changed the name to Odin Equipment. Initially, the company sold specialist climbing gear only, with Rick the sole employee, who kept everything in a suitcase under a couch. By 1972, the company had grown, as had the demand for gear, so he opened Rick’s Mountain Shop, a part-time retail store in the Brisbane suburb of Taringa. By 1975, though, Rick’s vision had expanded, leading him, along with co-founder Mike Meadows, to establish Mountain Designs. And the fledgling company wasn’t selling gear; it was manufacturing it, starting with tents and down sleeping bags.

From the early days, innovation was at the core of MDs. In 1977, the company introduced Gore-Tex to Australia. Had the company not done so, Tim Macartney-Snape says, the chances of young alpinists like him accessing Gore-Tex was “none. You had to travel. The only information you got was from magazines, and there weren’t that many back then.”

Speaking of magazines, Wild didn’t yet exist, but it soon would. In 1981, when the magazine’s first issue went to print, not only did Mountain Designs advertise in it, the ad occupied a prominent position—the back cover. The ad was a photo of the famed Patagonian peaks Rick had earlier made his mark on; it also prominently featured its—suitably funky for the time—company logo, itself modelled on those same Patagonian peaks.

But Mountain Designs wasn’t just, as it still is today, supporting Wild Mag; it supported all manner of daring expeditions, including Tim Macartney-Snape’s 1984 ascent of Everest. It also supported Fred From when, in 1982, he became on Lhotse the first Aussie to climb over 8,000m; it supported Michael Groom’s and John Coulton’s 1987 ascent of 8,586m Kangchenjunga; and it supported Greg Child’s and Greg Mortimer’s K2 expedition in 1990. And there were many, many more expeditions that owed their success, in part, to Mountain Designs’ support and its quality gear.

In 2004, Rick sadly succumbed to cancer. “Rick,” says Tim, “was no bullshit. [A] straight-to-the-point sort of guy. Yeah, obviously [he was] pretty competitive, and you could probably say an overachiever.” It was Rick, and Mountain Designs, says Tim, “that made us realise that good gear could be made in Australia.”

But, says Chris Hartley, Mountain Designs’ marketing manager for years, the company has never been solely about “your Tim Macartney-Snapes and your Greg Mortimers and those more extreme adventurers, but also right down to your mums and dads and families on weekends. And the brand has continued for fifty years to be underpinned by that mantra of supporting Australians going on outdoor adventures. And that’s why, I think, it sits in the market like it does, a proud Australian brand.”

To celebrate the birthday, Mountain Designs will soon be releasing a legacy range, a capsule collection of items—including a sleeping bag, technical and racing packs, and more—inspired by the company’s history and with an old-school vibe, right down to that old psychedelic logo.

The range is a celebration not only of the company, but of Rick White. “He was,” says Chris, “an adventurer at heart. He lived and breathed it. And despite Rick not [being] with us anymore, the brand itself has always tried to continue on with that spirit.”

Mountain Designs’ classic logo from the ‘80s (above) and its current one (below). Both were inspired by the Patagonian peaks beloved by Rick White.

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