In 2000, Steve "Manboy" Townshend took a 25-metre fall. Sonnie Trotter wrote about it in his book Uplifted: The Evolution of a Climbing Life. It’s the miraculous tale of a near-fatal disaster on a route called F-Dude 5.14a. He returned the next year and climbed it! This is climbing at its most raw and real: terrifying, redemptive, unforgettable. 

The Fall of Manboy

One year after becoming a climber, I became a competition climber, at first at the regional level, then both on the Junior National Team and on the open North American circuit. For someone who’d started in the gym, it was the next logical step to compete against other gym climbers, because competitions were strictly held on artificial walls, which was the only thing I knew at the time. It was 1996, before my trip to Rifle with Lisa, before the trade show, and before I got sponsored.

But I never felt fully inspired or at ease in the competition arena. I’d quit gymnastics because I didn’t enjoy being judged, and then I quit climbing competitions because I didn’t enjoy being ranked.

I wanted to travel where I wanted to climb, and not just where the next competition was. I wanted to climb on my time, not just when my name was called from a list. And I certainly didn’t want to be called down from a climb for running out of time on the wall. I’ve always had an aversion to rules and regulations, thanks to my unencumbered childhood on the farm.

Although I’ll admit that I saw some beautiful cities and created some wonderful friendships on the comp circuit, it was not a long road for me. I realized I’d rather spend a thousand dollars on camping and climbing in the wilderness for a month or two than spend it on airfare and accommodation for a single weekend, locked in isolation, unable to see the wall until it was my turn to climb, only to be out of the competition the moment I fell or slipped due to nerves, which wasn’t uncommon in those days.

All that said, competition climbing can be much safer than outdoor climbing, with fewer objective hazards and fewer opportunities for human error. In early 2000, I nearly killed a friend by lowering him off his rope. He fell to the ground from approximately seventy-five feet. It was simultaneously the best and worst day of my life.

The day started off like any other in Arizona, warm and sunny, with deep blue skies. The day before had been a rest day, complete with a hot shower at a nearby swimming complex. I felt strong and fresh, and gripped the steering wheel extra tight as I pulled onto the freeway from Mesquite, Nevada, heading for the crag, blasting Metallica and feeling the vitality of life surging through me. I really did feel the best I had ever felt, like that day was one of the best days ever to be alive on this planet.

But nobody knows when tragedy will strike.

The Virgin River Gorge—or VRG, as it’s most often called—is where I got the greatest value for our Canadian currency. I’d saved up my loonies (Canadian dollars), packed everything into the truck, and headed southwest for another winter of rock, this time to this small corner of Arizona—the Arizona Strip—just east of the Nevada border.

The VRG has some of the best concentrations of difficult, high-quality rock climbs in the Lower 48, with the finest routes on a wild panel of black-and-tan limestone called the Blasphemy Wall, which tilts out over the canyon, soaring 120 feet. Paired with beautiful weather, free camping, cheap hotel rooms, and all-you-can-eat buffets, it was a climbing bum’s dream.

One of the kids I grew up competing against, Steve Townshend, a fellow Ontario climber, later became as committed to the dirtbag life as I was. We often ran into each other at various climbing destinations and spent time climbing together in the Vegas area, in particular at Red Rock Canyon and the VRG.

We were always on a budget and always slept in our vehicles. In Steve’s case, it was a four-door sedan, a Chevy Corsica. He would taco his 6’4″ frame around the back seat in a semi-circle and somehow make it work. As a teen, Steve had sprouted, his build lean and muscular, his shoulders like those of a professional boxer. Rumors were spreading fast that this kid could climb, and climb hard, but when Dave Smart, the owner of the Canadian climbing magazine Gripped, met him, he looked up and said, “I heard you were the man, but you’re just a boy.” For the better part of a decade, the nickname “Manboy” stuck; it was how most climbers knew him, though I always called him Steve.

Steve also had a unique and extraordinary past, with so many close encounters that our friends would joke about his nine lives.

At age five, he nearly drowned by walking across a loose swimming-pool cover, sinking while simultaneously being engulfed by the plastic tarp—saved only by a friend’s quick-thinking father, who jumped in and plucked the boy out alive. When Steve was at summer camp, at age fourteen, sleeping under a canoe, a bear came by to investigate in the middle of the night. It sniffed and scratched all around him, and Steve, fortunately, avoided a mauling.

The next year, at age fifteen, at the same summer camp, Manboy was holding a flashlight when a lightning strike sent him flying, conducted by the metal. Years later, he fell off his bike into oncoming highway traffic when his tire couldn’t clear a nearby curb. He narrowly avoided being run over. At a hot springs in Colorado, he once knocked himself unconscious by sliding down a drainage channel and hitting his chin on a concrete block. We found him seconds after we heard him, facedown in the bloody mineral water. Some friends and I helped him get to the hospital that day. He escaped with multiple stitches and a scar on his chin, and at least one chipped tooth.

Steve is kind and always willing to help a friend or extend an offer. He can whip up a vegan meal to challenge any TV cooking host and brew an espresso unrivaled by your top local barista. The first time we met was at a climbing competition in 1996, both of us in the beginner category. To this day, he reminds me that we placed last and second to last at the Wall Crawl event in Toronto. But I’m not sure who beat who.

Steve is a genetic phenom. When young Steve wasn’t climbing, he enjoyed random feats of strength and other challenges. Once while we were out bouldering in Ontario, we watched as he picked up a rock so big it would have crippled any of our peers. Unfortunately, after his victorious lift, he dropped the massive rock to the ground, and it cracked in two halves, gouging him on the shin and toppling Manboy to his knees. But it was all in good fun.

I also recall a day when he consumed eight Mars bars in a row because someone told him it was impossible to eat seven. He did it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s some sort of record. When I caught up with Steve months later, he told me that he didn’t shit for a week afterward.

That winter at the VRG, I was twenty, and Steve nineteen. The VRG is close to Mesquite, Nevada, home to nearly half-a-dozen casinos. We saw all the gamblers smoking cigars, with fake tans, Hawaiian shirts, and wearing sunglasses at night—the casino life is sadly entertaining. We also started observing how it all worked, though we weren’t ourselves old enough to gamble legally nor did we have much money to risk. We could only afford $20 every few days, and we needed someone we trusted who was old enough to place our bets.

When an older friend from Toronto flew in for a week of climbing, we told him our dilemma, and he was happy to help. We quickly learned that he had the stone-cold eyes and smooth hand of a blackjack player. We gave him some cash in the buffet, $20 each, and while we enjoyed our milkshakes, he’d double our money.

We did it again, and again he doubled our money. Third time’s a charm, right? We did it again and doubled our money for a total of $160. That was enough to pay for a week of hotel living and endless buffets. We felt like kings, and the extra cash helped boost our morale and extend our stay.

That year, Steve was trying a climb called F-Dude, a brilliant 5.14a on the Blasphemy Wall with constant movement—pumpy resistance climbing in which there’s hardly anywhere to rest—capped off by an ultra-technical finish on matchstick-sized holds. Somewhat ironically, the route joins into and finishes on another American classic, Fall of Man, a 5.13b. And this was the anchor from which he fell.

“Have fun, try hard,” I said as we bumped fists and Steve started up in his lightning-fast climbing style. Lean as a greyhound, without a single ounce of wasted flesh, he climbed quickly and precisely, nearly sprinting between clips. The whole route is approximately 115 to 120 feet long (35–36 m) and almost

impossible to lower in a single shot without a stretchy 70-meter rope. Back then, 60-meter ropes were most common and affordable, and thus descending off the monster climb was common practice by stopping at a midway anchor. In other words, the leader (in this case, Steve) would be lowered from the top anchor to this midway station, clipping into the bolts, untying from his rope, re-threading it, and tying back in. The leader would then be lowered the rest of the way to the ground. However, unbeknownst to me, Steve had recently cut his rope shorter because of too much abuse near the ends that made it soft and worn out. This trim created a rope that was perhaps 55 meters, maybe less.

With Interstate 15 running through the gorge, it’s often hard to hear any climbing commands after the climber passes forty feet, and at eighty feet you can practically forget it, especially when the brakes of semi-trucks reverberate off the canyon walls. For lowering, we’d often use hand signals to indicate whether we wanted to keep lowering or to stop. Steve didn’t send F-Dude on this attempt, but he did make it to the top with only one rest. I was looking up, watching his every move, while slowly lowering him down.

Steve waved his right hand up and down to indicate lowering, while stretching his left hand out for the security of the midway anchor. He was only inches from grabbing it when I felt the end of the rope slip through my hand.

“FUCK!” I yelled, knowing immediately what had happened and knowing there was nothing I could do. I still recall the sensation of the nylon zipping through my belay device. It happened so fast. There was no safety knot at the end of Steve’s rope to stop it from slipping, and neither of us had checked for one. If only I’d just glanced down to look one time, if only for a second. I wanted to switch places with Steve, and my heart sank with self-loathing. My friend was now airborne, falling toward the rocky, slabby staging area below the wall from seventy-five feet up.

I sprinted over the uneven ground toward Steve’s landing spot, my arms outstretched, purely reacting in fight-or-flight mode. I vividly recall seeing the whites of his eyes as he looked over his shoulder and fell toward me. Then we collided and tumbled down the hill in a plume of dust.

Later, when I asked Steve about his experience, he told me that as he was falling, he had flashbacks of falling off a deck at his home as a kid. And just like he’d done before, he did everything he could to stay upright and protect his head. I had a similar flashback in those brief, distressing seconds. I recalled catching a friend in my gym, who fell from maybe ten or twelve feet and landed in my arms like he was sitting in a chair. I cradled Steve in the exact same way. Fate, luck, whatever you call it, could not have timed our impact any better.

Seconds later, we were surrounded by friends and fellow climbers. Everything was a blur. Some of them had first-aid training and began taking control of the situation. While the adrenaline made it hard for me to recall the exact events that followed, I know these folks took good care of us. My first memory after the impact was trying to figure out where all the blood was coming from—blood that was all over Steve’s pants and in the dirt.

“Sonnie, your hand,” said a voice, and when I looked down I could see my shredded knuckles pulsing with dark-red spurts. I immediately tried to wrap them up. The pain didn’t come until later.

Steve never lost consciousness, and in the calm chaos around him, asked our friend Tiffany to take some pictures. “My camera’s in my jacket pocket,” he told her matter-of-factly.

It took a team of people to evacuate Steve down the rugged trail and back under the interstate, to the parking area across the river and the highway. There were obvious fears of internal bleeding, a broken back, neck, or femur, not to mention any of the other two hundred smaller bones in his body. Nobody decks from nearly eighty feet and walks away unscathed.

My arms felt heavy and weak, but there were no signs of concussion or other damage. The backs of my hands had lost a lot of skin, and I had punctured a hole beside the first knuckle of my right hand that oozed for weeks. But other than that, I was able to walk myself back to the parking lot and have a friend drive me to the hospital, an hour away in Vegas.

Steve was already there, getting his smaller wounds dressed, and his vital signs taken. He was also being scanned and inspected for potentially ruptured organs and a shattered skeleton. I wasn’t able to see him.

At administration, I struggled giving the nurse all my information, and was frustrated that Americans don’t pronounce the letter Z the same way Canadians do—“zed.” With no cell phone, I asked if I could call my family from the courtesy phone.

In the corner of the waiting room, I dialed my parents’ number. “Hello?” answered my mother. When I heard her voice, I instantly felt an eruption of emotions, and wasn’t sure how to tell her what had happened. Until that point, I hadn’t shed a single tear—I didn’t think I would. But now, a torrent threatened to cut loose.

“Hi, Mom,” I whispered. “I’m at the hospital in Las Vegas. There was an accident …”

And with those words my knees buckled. I dropped into the corner, my body shook, my voice trembled, and wave after wave of sobbing wracked my body. I could barely breathe. “It was my fault,” I said. I was so angry and disappointed with myself, but mostly, I was scared. Scared for Steve, scared for what this would mean for him. Even today as I write this, over twenty years later, my eyes still well up. And the scars on the back of my hands remind me every day how lucky we were.

When the doctor called us in to discuss Steve’s condition, I shuffled in with my head held low. “Well, I don’t know what they put in the water up there in Canada,” said the doctor, “but your friend here is in good shape, with no broken bones.” I took a few deep breaths to process the news and to hold back more tears.

Acouple days later, we were both at our friend Stephanie’s townhome in Summerlin, in western Las Vegas. She’d graciously let us crash with her until we could get back on our feet.

We were a bit of an odd team. Steve had bruising and swelling around his ankles, and upon further X-rays in Toronto, would learn that he had fractured part of his left heel. He stayed seated most of the time. I had thick bandages on my hands that made using my fingers challenging. I remember our first meal together after getting released from the hospital: I would bring him the veggies to cut, he would cut them, and then I’d bring them back to the stove to cook.

Incredibly, Steve was back climbing again within a month. I took about the same time because I couldn’t use my right hand, but considering that everyone who’d witnessed the fall that day told us we should both be dead, I was not about to complain—about anything.

Two years before, Steve had a similar experience, but as the belayer this time. His Grigri belay device, which uses a cam to lock down on the rope, closed and caught the rope just before it went through the end. Something similar had happened to me, too, as I was being lowered in the Red River Gorge years ago. I felt the weightlessness of going airborne as the belay device slipped and my belayer lost control of the brake. I fell for a lot longer than I wanted to, and only stopped when he gained control again, twenty feet above the ground. Steve and I both knew exactly what it felt like, and how easily and quickly accidents can happen when we let down our guard. They are surprisingly common; if you climb long enough, you quickly amass thousands of days on rock—and thousands of possible opportunities for error.

Steve quickly returned after the accident and got back on F-Dude, but it was too warm, and his sweaty fingers slid off the small holds. He returned the next fall, and it became his very first 5.14 redpoint—linking the climb from bottom to top without a single fall, an impressive milestone for anyone.

Twenty years later, as my own children go out into the world, having fun, taking risks, and making their own mistakes, I just hope deep down that they won’t have to experience too many close calls, because I know what it feels like, and it’s terrible. But I also know that it’s a part of our development, and I have little to no control over life’s events. I’m slowly preparing myself for the phone calls, while also hoping they never come. If they do, I want to be gentle and patient, and listen carefully and lovingly, just like my mother did for me on that horrible day.

Life can flip upside down in a fraction of a second. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. We endured a traumatic event, and I’m lucky to still call Steve a friend today. He’s since become an accomplished climber and commercial pilot, flying all around the world, and he still crushes 5.14s for breakfast.

Just weeks after the accident, when Steve was back home at his climbing gym in Toronto, a girl in her twenties fell off the wall right near where he was sitting down with his crutches. She had fallen from only a few feet, he told me, but landed at a weird angle and broke her shinbones—a compound fracture that punctured her skin.

It’s astonishing how fragile our bodies can be. When Steve left Ontario for his next trip, he used half a roll of duct tape to secure the oversized safety knot on the end of his rope, forming a mace-like ball at the end of the cord. I thought that was a damn good idea.