Second ascent, May 1978. Notably, the ONLY Non-Cam ascent.
Looking up from the bottom. Notice Ray's pinned out corner. We thought it was pretty gross when we got there and saw what he had done.
Starting the crux.
I popped my shoulder right after this move.
It took us four days of work. We would usually give it one burn each. I was doing better on it than Max was so it was me who was placing the gear and moving the rope up. We had a moral point as to how far up we wanted to yo-yo the thing though.
On the third day, on my first try, I blasted past the crux, past our high point and was going for the top. I was really going for it. I was maybe 15 feet out from my last piece and was placing a #8 hex. It wasn't too good and as I moved past it I kicked it with my foot and it tipped out. I was looking a big air so I reached over to the rope my brother was hanging on, taking pictures and batmaned to the top. We took a rest day (Free climbed to Mammoth on the Salathe)
As we were rapping down on the last day Max said that if we didn't get it that day he didn't want to come back. I felt the same way. I went up, got into the crux and separated (semi-dislocated) my shoulder, a not uncommon occurrence at that time in my life.
I lowered off and Max went up. He didn't even get to his previous high point and lowered off. I rested a bit, started up and climbed it to the top. At the last move, I was reaching for the crack on the slab and missed it by an inch. My fingers skidded to the edge, I recomposed and tossed again, getting it. I pulled over onto the slab and started crying.
Placing gear on with my foot on the ramp near the top on my successful ascent.
I stabbed at the crack, missed and my fingers drug back to here. I stabbed again and did it.
It was the hardest route of my life, I had popped my shoulder earlier that day and we had spent four days on it, more than any other route at that time.
We used to pay my brother with six packs to hang and take photos of us. He was there for two days on Tales and here on the Phoenix all four days. He had my camera and Max's camera, that's why I don't have any photos of Max on the route.
great pics and thread mark! always a climb I dreamed about! I bouldered with max a few times at the leap. Did the second accent of mainline there with bill price and anjie. I think we ran into each other at the donnells overlook but not sure....
Great effort leading that bastard on Hexes. There's a pretty uniform sized bit (like one inch - the very worst size for me) just after the traverse (easy with big fingers) that would be grim to pause and wiggle hexes in.
Amazing that Croft and Moffit fired this thing. I had to go back three times, with Ron Fawcett, and we yo-yoed the sh#t out of the thing till we had all but the last bit of crack totally wired, move for move. We worked it, and kept getting the rope higher, till we basically had a top rope strung - shabby style by any definition. I got to where I could float the lower part, to just past the traverse - but that size, where the crack goes vert, was just horendous for both Ron and me.
The ghastly pinned out lower bit (like two or three body lengths), the awkward sling belay at the bottom, and the weird location make the Phoenix a super hard curiosity rather than an all time classic, IMO. Hang Dog Flyer has a few cranker moves, and I could never turn the roof on Owl Roof, but for my money, Phoenix is by far Jardine's hardest route in the Valley.
Is there anyone, (besides Mr Jardine, and his views are always welcome, in any case) who can quantitatively compare the Phoenix, to Elephant's eliminate?
Boy I must say that these great threads (including Tales of Power, the Crucifix and others) are makin' me want to get in really good shape and onsight those routes before my body turns to jello.
Thanks all and please keep posting those hand-sweating photos...
Nice account and pictures, Mark. Cannot even imagine how hard that is.
Your comment, "It took us four days of work. We would usually give it one burn each. I was doing better on it than Max was so it was me who was placing the gear and moving the rope up. We had a moral point as to how far up we wanted to yo-yo the thing though" is a slice in time.
You guys were amoung the first to follow Ray's routes with a sense of the earlier sensibilities of 'working' a route. Great history to have a specific instance to point to.
Youse guys would be some mean Mo-fos with today's shoes and modern gear selection. Even Fires were a major step up from the EB's you had then and now friction is even further along than Fires. Bad-assed is the understatement. Great stuff! Thanks for sharing it.
Mark, did you end up having surgery to fix your shoulder? Just curious - I eventually had to, after repeated dislocations, the first from a bicycle crash.
In 1980, after dislocating my shoulder while skiing, I had it operated on. I haven't had a problem since although I still do specific weight exercises for it.
I missed this first time around - great story Mark.
I belayed Alan Watts on The Phoenix in June 1984. The deal was he would lend me 40 'biners for a wall attempt in exchange for a day holding his ropes. He'd been on it the previous year and expected to spend many hours working it.
Climbing with Alan was an eye-opener, I'd never come across such professionalism before. At that time, climbers, particularly Brits., liked to see themselves as above that sort of thing: to be cool you had to succeed without really trying. Alan had a topo of the route with every gear placement and jam individually described ("left hand, middle two fingers, thumb down"). It turned out to be a great deal for me: he fired it first go.
I remember standing in the Mountain Shop in '79 or '80, reading a report in Mountain mag about how he ran out of gear most of the way up, hung out on some manky jams, and hand and mouth hauled some extra gear on a rap line. I guess from its placement in the mag, I can assume he climbed it one of those years, or just before, but any details on that one?
For those of us of a certain age, that States of the Art article was very memorable. Wasn't it spread over two issues? Nice to get a fleshed out version of part of that story.
When I started law school at UCLA in 1976, I seldom got to the Valley. When I went to take the bar exam in July of 1979, I stopped by REI on the way to Long Beach and picked up a copy of Mountain Magazine that had the article about you and Max entitled "States of the Art." Looking at those pictures of you on Hangdog Flyer, Phoenix, etc. left a big impression on me, and showed me just how much climbing had progressed.
Thanks for the photos Mark! Nice YES T-shirt you're sporting as well. You and Max were on fire during that period . . . I saw a slide show you guys did in the Bay Area and will always remember your humble demeanor.
As for the Beth Rodden reference . . . seems like she uses a tensioned lead rope that allows her claims of "free" ascents. Just saying.
How sweet would it be to hear from ol' Jardine. Maybe he has written about it before.
And pardon my lack of history knowledge, but this was the first 5.13 climbed, right? So was Mark the second person to climb 5.13? And perhaps the only one to climb a .13 with just passive pro?
As others have said: I can't believe what I miss on Supertopo. Between this, the Tales of Power thread, and almost enough photos of desert cracks and Wide Vedauwoo, why don't we just live here?
I like piecing together the eras of Yosemite climbing history from these posts. Just on a personal level, I dropped out of Yosemite climbing just before this in '72 and this is what I had fantasies about, not necessarily this climb, but a climb like this.
R.J., not hangdogging for the moment (Meyers photo)
I can only think of a few other images of The Phoenix. Patagonia ran a shot a while back, and there's that one of Peter Croft on it in the Heinz Zak book. Any others out there? Please, more stories from the ashes!
Hey mark- It's not on the same level, but how about some stories regarding the ffa of White Eye at Cathedral in'78 ?
I was a beginner then and was wondering "what's that route ?"
A stout 12 for sure and still rejecting people 33 years later.
Bill did not get it onsight, but his ascent was amazing none the less. I think he went down to attempt it a couple of times. I was with him on one attempt, along with Steve Hong, who was hanging in the Valley cause he wanted to learn how to jam, (he learned quite well!).
On maybe the third time down there, he went up to try the hard traverse again and surprised himself by sending it easily, he hung on the first good jam in the main crack and had the belayer swing in the rappel rope, then he hauled up the rack with one hand and his teeth, then sent the whole thing! Truly heroic, as he hadn't been on the upper crack before, though rapping in and jugging out you do get to see it.
Bill was incredibly talented, and a very humble, friendly guy as well.
Wow - fantastic pictures! Thanks Mark. You don't see many pictures of this route mainly because it is a logistical nightmare just to get to it, let alone do a photo shoot (unless you have a good telephoto lens).
Phoenix is about like doing 2-3 laps on Equinox followed by an overhanging lunatic fringe. Definitely not a "giveme" even at 5.13 IMO.
Steve didn't get very far that day in 1979, neither did I, we were both stumped by the traverse. Steve followed me on Tales of Power that week, and we did the 3rd free ascent of West Face of El Cap the same week as the FFA, and Mark and Max doing the 2nd.
A few years later, Steve got extremely good at cracks as we know...maybe he went back years later for a rematch on the Phoenix, I don't know.
As for the Beth Rodden reference . . . seems like she uses a tensioned lead rope that allows her claims of "free" ascents. Just saying.
Trying to understand what this means. What makes you think she (and TC, and the film crew) lied about her Phoenix ascent? Seems unlikely to me, but who knows. Can you back it up?
Great pictures on Mark Hudon's post!
I wish I had more pictures of the actual climbing...
Looking up at The Phoenix from the belay.
Credit: drewsky
...but I managed a redpoint of this thing in '08. I forced my partner to go down there two days in a row and hang out with the ants at the belay. I burned a couple attempts out of sheer nervousness and did the thing on my third attempt. That climb along with the Tales of Power/Separate Reality combo stand out in my mind as some of my favorite Yosemite single pitches, maybe because of their unique locations and good exposure.
I don't think the Phoenix is really that much harder than Equinox, but it's kind of an apples and oranges comparison because of the sizes involved: that 60 feet of thin hands on Phoenix gives a nice pump, while I found sharpness to be a major factor on Equinox. Doing Phoenix without the cams would certainly up the ante, but that's why all us kids have Aliens and TCU's these days.
I have to admit that the initial holds, while obviously 'manufactured' didn't faze me all that much. Not that it should be the gold standard of establishing routes, mind you, but I've seen worse. Then again, that initial corner probably would have gone free without them and been a real stemming challenge!
Also, that must be a half-baked attempt at a joke about Beth Rodden and a 'tensioned lead rope' (whatever the hell that means; usually having too much tension on the lead is harder, not the other way around): with the way she climbs, the Phoenix would be a mere trifle for her (and it was: she onsighted it!).
I can't back up sh#t. I've never seen the video. My reference originated from viewing commercial photos of other "free" ascents that clearly display a "tensioned" lead rope through gear placed above the climber.
as he hadn't been on the upper crack before, though rapping in and jugging out you do get to see it.
... Not quite. Bill and I went up there maybe a year before and borrowed some of Jardine's prototype friends and put a top-rope on it. Bill did it in like 6 pitches, me...maybe 20.
The part right off the belay was too wet so we never tr'd that section. Bill's ascent is truly amazing though because hanging from a "good" jam to fetch the rack... man those jams kinda suck and with the leaning nature there's no good rests that I remember.
AH's free-solo: can't even fathom that kind of ability.
No, I didn't do the FA of White Eye but I did the FFA of it. All sorts of people (Henry Barber, Jimmy Dunn) were telling me that I'd never be able to do it, that I was too short. Max and I went over there and I did it first try, higher up on the pitch I took a big fall, almost 30 feet. Henry got all freaked out, said "this is getting serious", and left. I went back up the pitch and free climbed the whole thing. I can't remember if Max followed it on not, he probably did, there wasn't much that one of us could do that the other couldn't.
I admit, I was out of climbing by the late 70s when this all happened, but this shows what I missed. I love the two carabiner link to the pro (pin?) under the roof. We did that all the time, I remember Matt Pollock saying when I started climbing again in the 1990s, "we never worried about rope drag", while he suggested that I use a runner or quick draw.
Mark, if you would have a beer, I'll buy you one. If not beer, something else (added in edit: pomegranate juice or coconut water).
Wasn't there a cool shot of Moffat on the Phoenix in a Boreal add back in the later 80's, with a caption like 'JM flashes the Phoenix'? It was taken from some distance.
I'm not home for another week but if someone could dig it up and scan it I would be grateful.
I remember the traverse was impossible to stitch with the old nuts and so I had to crank up into the crack and with my fatty hands buttering out, wiggle a hex into that one incher with my feet pasted on that ramp. I barely got the rope clipped in and pitched off. Ron Fawcett went back up and ran the rope like 20 feet off that hex, unable to stop, and I was thinking if he rips, which looked eminent, he's going the distance. For someone with big hands like me that crack was just plain awful. And painful, too. Free soloing Phoenix is a remarkable thing, so my hat's off to Alex.
A bit off-topic, but watching the video embedded above, at 25:20 on Sentinel Alex passes the fixed camera placed just above a good handhold. He slaps the handhold almost sarcastically with an odd facial expression, while the commentator makes inane statements about hanging from 4 fingers (while his feet are well-planted). Was this a bit of an FU moment for Alex?
Luke
Let us know!