There’s a joke in climbing about how to climb harder the older you get. Just wait long enough, the joke goes, and the routes that you did years ago will probably be upgraded. And who knows? Perhaps you really did climb as hard as you thought you never did!
Of course there’s probably little value to learning that you have unwittingly achieved a milestone on your personal ticklist merely because the next generation has decided an old-school route is actually harder than once thought. After all, you did the route years ago, and the experience meant what it meant at the time—no more, no less. Besides, we all agree that grades are meaningless, from those who think that grades are meaningless because they are a cisheteropatriarchical construct in need of interrogating and dismantling by doing “The 👏Work👏” to those who are simply stoned and quoting Chris Sharma.
Well, not everyone thinks grades are meaningless … There’s this guy:
Tommy Caldwell got a little gift yesterday as Matty Hong made the first repeat of his mythic and forgotten route, “Flex Luther,” located at the Fortress of Solitude in Colorado, and upgraded the climb from its original, modest 5.14d/15a slash grade to a full-blown 5.15b.
This is great news for Tommy, who is celebrating becoming a 5.15b climber by going on the “ice cream and beer diet.”
Then, he responded more seriously:
“I’m actually really curious to go check it out and see how it changed. I bet I could still remember most of the moves.”
Indeed, this would be an interesting exercise, and I hope this super-climber seriously does revisit his old kryptonite-wielding nemesis.
I’ve heard reports of Flex Luthor changing over the years as various suitors attempt to repeat it—and by “changing” I mean that loose rock has been removed. I’ve heard stories of literal “hundreds of pounds of rock” being pulled off of Flex by a climber who was so disheartened by the experience that he gave up on trying to repeat it.
“This isn’t the same route Tommy did at this point,” he said.
Others I’ve spoken to view these claims more skeptically. Whatever sequence Tommy used, it seems unlikely that he was relying on blocks of rock that were so precariously situated that they could be pulled off by hand by another climber.
But anything is possible, of course. This route is almost 20 years old. That’s almost 20 freeze-thaw cycles on Western Slope limestone.
I’ve written on the topic of how climbing history changes as routes get upgraded or downgraded. Should we revise our accounting of the official record book as new climbers, with updated ideas about difficulty, offer their opinions on historic routes? There still doesn’t seem to be much consensus on this topic, and at least part of it seems to be motivated by our emotional connections to the past. For example, I have a strong connection to Chris Sharma’s “Realization” (Biographie) being the first 5.15a in the world. At the time, it was that—and it was such a big deal. It’s hard to explain how exciting this moment was to a generation raised on social media, but all the hype, the early videos, the magazine covers made it feel like a moon landing.
Then, a 15-year-old Adam Ondra repeated Open Air, Alex Huber’s route in Austria, and suggested that it should be considered 5.15a. Ondra was merely suggesting his opinion about a rock climb’s difficulty, which he loves to do and is very good at, but of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the fallout from his claim would mean that Open Air is really the world’s first 5.15a and not Realization.
Of course, none of this really matters—but these kinds of historical revisions do create an interesting dynamic in which we take an accomplishment away from one person and hand it to another.
Ironically, if what Tommy climbed back in 2003 ends up being as hard as Matty Hong says it is today, that would take away another notch in Sharma’s belt: the claim to the first 5.15b in America. It would also probably make Tommy the first person in the world to climb 5.15b. All in all, it’s a very good day to be Tommy Caldwell.
Oh, yeah, and congrats to Matty, since he’s the one who actually did something this week.
Featured photo: Tommy Caldwell on Flex Luthor in 2003. Photo by Corey Rich.
“Oh yeah, congrats to Matty” – haha get him on the runout! Margo too if they are still in town.
The climbing scene has been blowing up this fall with hard ascents. The post-covid training predictions have come true.