Fall of the Phantom Lord: Climbing and the Face of Fear - Softcover

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Andrew Todhunter writes about extreme sports in an ongoing series of articles for The Atlantic Monthly. An amateur climber and adventurer of all trades, Todhunter is usually a participant in the sports that he writes about, and he has climbed extensively with soloist Dan Osman. He lives in the New York area with his wife and young daughter.

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In 1989, while attempting a new route on a difficult overhanging rock face, climber Dan Osman fell. Again and again, protected by the rope, he fell. He decided then that it would not be in climbing but in falling that he would embrace his fear--bathe in it, as he says, and move beyond it.
A captivating exploration of the daredevil world of rock climbing, as well as a thoughtful meditation on the role of risk and fear in the author's own life.
In the tradition of the wildly popular man-versus-nature genre that has launched several bestsellers, Andrew Todhunter follows the lives of world-class climber Dan Osman and his coterie of friends as he explores the extremes of risk on the unyielding surface of the rock.
Climbing sheer rock faces of hundreds or thousands of feet is more a religion than a sport, demanding dedication, patience, mental and physical strength, grace, and a kind of obsession with detail that is crucial just to survive. Its artists are modern-day ascetics who often sacrifice nine-to-five jobs, material goods, and the safety of everyday life to pit themselves and their moral resoluteness against an utterly unforgiving opponent.
In the course of the two years chronicled in "Fall of the Phantom Lord, the author also undertakes a journey of his own as he begins to weigh the relative value of extreme sports and the risk of sudden death. By the end of the book, as he ponders joining Osman on a dangerous fall from a high bridge to feel what Osman experiences, Todhunter comes to a new understanding of risk taking and the role it has in his life, and in the lives of these climbers.
Beautifully written, "Fall of the Phantom Lord offers a fascinating look at aworld few people know. It will surely take its place alongside "Into Thin Air and "The Perfect Storm as a classic of adventure literature.

"From the Hardcover edition.

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At dawn on his thirty-second birthday, rock climber Dan Osman is poised to break the world record, his own, for a free fall from a standing structure.  Using nothing more than the modified equipment of his trade, including single climbing ropes, a full body harness, and a reinforced anchor, he will jump an estimated 660 feet from a bridge in Northern California. The bridge soars some 700 feet above a wild river valley.

Osman's dark hair, long enough to cover his shoulder blades, is bound in a ponytail.  Of mixed Japanese and European heritage, he is commonly mistaken as Native American.  Weighing 155 pounds at five feet ten and a half, Osman is built like a gymnast.

During a safety meeting in the hours before departure for the bridge, Osman relegates tasks to the members of his support team--fellow climbers Geoff Maliska, twenty-three, Osman's unspoken disciple, and Anthony Meeks, twenty.  Maliska is gregarious and irreverent.  Meeks--whom the other climbers have known for less than a week--is reticent and self-conscious.  Together, they review the details of rigging and safety protocol.  Upon arrival at the site they move out across the girders of the bridge, beneath the traffic, far above the valley floor.  The sky is clear.  A light wind moves through the girders.  Osman rigs the elaborate anchor--a nest of nylon loops, or runners, climbing rope, and aluminum hardware--near the middle of the bridge.  Leaving Meeks to tend the anchor in the capacity of downrigger, Osman continues with Maliska another 160 feet across the span.

The greatest danger in a fall of such a distance, Osman believes, is not the failure of the system, but entanglement within the rope.  The force of impact achieved at terminal velocity, he suspects, could bisect or decapitate a bodywound in the 10.5-millimeter cord.  On this jump, to practice extricating himself from entanglement should it ever accidentally occur, Osman will intentionally wrap himself in the rope as he falls.  He will then uncoil himself and assume a safe position, all within the seven seconds before impact.  The attempt is  unprecedented.

When he nears the launching point, the rope hanging slack beneath the bridge in a huge arc, Osman ties in, securing the rope to his harness.  Originating at this lateral distance from the anchor, much of the fall's inertia will be diverted upon impact into a rocketing swing five hundred feet across the valley floor.  As opposed to falling directly from the anchor position, this decreases the chance of entanglement and keeps initial impact forces--a striking whip when the rope runs out of slack--within reasonable limits.

Osman thoroughly checks his harness and knots three times, then examines his clothing for anything that might affect his fall.  He looks down the rope and signals Meeks.  Meeks checks the anchor, returns the signal--all is clear.

Osman begins to scale a girder, gaining the height necessary to break the record of his previous fall.  The beating of his heart becomes unmanageable and he stops.  He clings, closes his eyes, and fights for air.  He tries to breathe deeply, to slow his heart, to dilute the load of adrenaline.  Electric shocks fire like needles in the muscles of his hands, arms, and legs.  Breathing deeply, Osman beats back his fear and continues up the girder.  He stops twice, each time climbing farther before the panic mounts again and overwhelms him.

At last he reaches his launching point and stops.  He closes his eyes and breathes, emptying his mind.

Several minutes later he opens his eyes and looks out across the valley.  Traffic drums intermittently overhead.  There are fishermen in the river far below.  He watches the movement of their rods.  Their faint voices rise to the bridge.

Osman closes his eyes again and visualizes the entire sequence of his fall, dilating the seven seconds into eleven or twelve.  He will execute three cartwheels; in the middle of the third cartwheel he will twist his body and wrap himself one full turn in the rope.  He will then unwrap--calmly, methodically, he will not thrash, he will not thrash--and extend his limbs, relaxing as he enters the point of impact.  It is only when he completes the visualization that the risk of what he is about to attempt becomes clear.  In the wake of this realization his fear leaps to the next plateau.  Sweat runs from his pores and freezes. Goose bumps rise across his skin.

He glances down at Maliska and signs thumbs-up.  Maliska is chilled by the horror in Osman's locked, Medusan gaze--he later claims that he has never seen Osman more visibly afraid--but he grins and returns the affirmative gesture. "Happy sailing," he calls.

Osman looks out across the valley.  He steps through what he calls the moment of choice.  He shifts his weight slightly over his feet.  From fifteen, Osman counts down silently, breathing, saying only the ten and the five aloud.  As he counts, Osman draws a breath.  Four, three, two, one.  As he exhales, he springs from the girder, into the open air.  And then he falls.



As a boy, I spent many unwise hours climbing with friends on Hook Mountain, in Rockland County, New York.  The Hook is a geological appendage of the Palisades, which rise like a curtain along the western bank of the Hudson River north of the George Washington Bridge.  We climbed unroped, with little more in the way of equipment than canvas basketball shoes, cutoff shorts, and Yankee caps, and the degenerate rock came out in fistfuls like rotten teeth as we ascended.

We continued north on bikes along the river, past Haverstraw to the Bear Mountain Bridge.  One afternoon we skidded down the steep embankment from the road to walk across the girders underneath the bridge.  We trotted, then jogged back and forth across the grey-green rivet-studded beams, each one a foot, perhaps fifteen inches wide, leaning into gusts of wind to keep our balance, a hundred feet above the rocks along the river's eastern shore.

In the fifteen years that intervene I have dabbled broadly in outdoor sports.  I have surfed Mundaka, caved on Crete, and scuba dived beneath the frozen surface of high Sierran lakes, and on charitable days I bless this breadth of training and experience.  More commonly, I berate myself as a dilettante. Nowhere is this pattern more visible than in my relationship to climbing.  I have traversed glaciers in the North Cascades, rock climbed in the Rockies and Shawangunks, bouldered in areas from Fontainebleau to Joshua Tree, but technically I remain of middling skill.  Beside the likes of Osman I am not even a climber. In the cheerfully unminced words of Geoff Maliska, I am a flatlander.

Like legendary sea-kayaker Steve Sinclair--who paddled his specialized craft along the California coast in winter gales--Osman labors in my consciousness like a Titan, a figure of myth.  Osman's myth is an old one: a man wrestles eternally upon a span, above a chasm.  Locked in his arms is a dark angel, the Phantom Lord--not death itself, but fear of death.  The man falls, finally, but the Phantom Lord falls with him.  In the man's surrender lies the Phantom Lord's defeat.

I share Osman's fascination with fear and its management. As an adolescent, I courted danger with a near compulsion. Combined with an intractable resentment of...