UKH

Sorry to see on Facebook and the other channel that Phil Davidson has died. Another legend gone.

jcm

Sad news

As you said, a true legend.

What awfully sad news. It seems so premature.

Exactly, remember years ago staring awestruck at that poster of him soloing Right Wall,  think it used to be up in Inglesport café. 

This is such sad news. I remember Phil from my youth, when I hung out at Pex Hill. He had a huge aura around him, yet was a lovely guy.

Urban legend (round Pex Hill at the time) had it that after pulling through the crux of Right Wall, he called across to the photographer and asked him if he had enough shots, or did he need him to down climb it and do it the crux again!

Steve

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_v28X6jb3M/UoIlP0eeARI/AAAAAAAAAUk/37mUtUpJclA/s...

Yes. So sad. I never met Phil but he was a big presence around the climbing scene as I got going in the seventies and eighties. Up there with the best. I seem to recall that he was still climbing at a high standard even recently?

Yes, you can find his logbook on here. Great reading and inspirational. Casually leading E5 and E6 last year.... 

His logbook is on here - E6/7 in recent years, stunning.

Very sad. I join thousands of others in having gazed daily at that iconic Right Wall shot as I idled hours away at my desk. Forever young.

Sad news.

What an iconic image, though. 

I've just looked and yes, stunning that he was operating at those grades within the last year.

Really sad. As somebody from Warrington he was an inspiration and legend.  Never forgot the time I saw him turn up at Pex on his motorbike. Then reverse  soloed Dateline in his leather jacket with his helmet hanging for in his arms.  I could swear he was wearing trainers. 

so smooth to watch.

Style! You'd have thought he owned the place. Then again, he probably did.

Yes, that great shot of Right Wall was by David Jones. I remember meeting Phil Davidson at a party David had in the Peak District.

I was sitting in Ynws one dreary afternoon reading Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. Phil appeared holding his chalk bag and rock shoes and asked if I fancied going up to the Cromlech. I declined, Erica was just about to have another zipless moment. Some while later he reappeared having soloed Right Wall. I'm still not sure if I wished I'd gone with him.

What sad news, a true legend. I first met Phil back in the day when we used to go to Pex Hill, he was the technical master and his feats were stunning. I did not see him again until a few years ago at the climbing wall and in Leonidio and at Llanymynech, he was climbing really well and battling his illness relentlessly.

RIP Phil.

Sad news indeed.  Never knew him to speak to, but saw him soloing stuff at Pexhill back in the mid 1980s.  Astonishingly good.

T.

Really sad news.

I met him before I had started climbing and, at the time, certainly had no idea who he was. I was paddling (or "pagglin" in Phil's words) with some friends on the Fairy Glen of the Conwy in about 1994, I think. This was a section of river we had been on 7 or 8 times and had begun to feel pretty comfortable with being there. We came across a pair in the bottom of the gorge, one of them Phil it turned out, who were so clearly in their element they made us look like rank amateurs. I think they'd paddled it something like 50 odd times and knew absolutely every bit of the river blindfold. They were great company and invited us to stay at Helyg in the Ogwen valley, though I have a feeling neither of them were CC members, so we probably shouldn't have been there. I can remember listening to Phil's tales of climbing with Big Jim Jewell (who I had certainly heard of even though I wasn't climbing) and maybe also Gullich(?) and thinking "yeah right". That was until the following morning when he started bouldering just outside the hut and it was clear that he definitely knew what he was doing.

I few years later, after I had started climbing and all but stopped paddling, I saw the photo of him soloing Right Wall (I think it probably was on the wall of Inglesport Cafe) and being utterly blown away. I never met him again, but heard from a mutual friend / acquaintance that he had moved on from his kayaking phase and taken up the saxophone, pursuing that with the same similar intensity. It was good to see some more recent photos of him on here, especially the one of him on My Piano.

That one day on the river and the night in the hut have somehow stuck with me for 27 odd years. He seemed so down to earth, humble and encouraging and yet a total master of so many skills.

RIP Phil.

I think that was one of his party tricks - solo up Black Magic, down Dateline, belch loudly and claim not have climbed for years. He raised the energy level at Pex whenever he turned up.

I'm not 100% certain, but I believe he was an airline pilot at one point.

I'm not certain either but I do recall seeing a picture in a climbing mag of him dressed as one. And the obligatory Fawcett-style tache.

Sad. had a bit of a chat with him at Horseshoe a year or two ago and he seemed a very pleasant guy.

Was that the time that DJ rigged a line across the Cromlech to do a shoot? If so, I was on The Mot at the time, gazing in wonder. On the other hand, it might have been when he was snapping for his (DJ's) coffee-table book of climbing photos.

Apologies for going slightly off-thread

An old but interesting blog pist from Mike Owen:

http://mikeowenfrance.blogspot.com/2013/11/loud-and-proud.html?m=1

Hi Graham paggling this made me laugh. He only stopped paggling  3 years ago when the cancer started to kick in. Me and my mate paddled with him and we always joke about how phil would pronounce paddling. It just got to cold for him  and although still very strong climbing he struggled lugging his boat about. 

Cheers loz

John dunne told a great story to a group of us at a Bmc  book launch. Something  like this.  john was climbing in wales with Andy pollitt  and having a write battle with a route cockblock,  I think. Anyway in the morning phil turns  up and said to john shall we go climbing. John told phil about the route andy was workung and the battle he was having so phil said let's go and have a look to the point where phil walked up to the route and  I think he on  sighted it to, John's  amazement.  Very mutch phil! 

Yes, I believe it was.

Brilliant! And yes his "paggling"... just one of those little things that you don't forget. Legend is sometimes a bit overused, but definitely not in Phil's case.

Sorry to see that

As you say, another legend

Phil was an active member of The Friends of Pex Hill facebook group and had his own facebook page where he left a last message for his mates and where messages of condolence for Kate, his partner, and his family can be left. Phil had a horrendous and painful battle with cancer but true to the character of the man he kept on climbing until the last possible minute. We talk about urban myths but most of the stories concerning Phil were actually true! 

No, I wasn't referring to the Peat photo, but the vastly superior one by David Jones (which he sold for a while as a giant poster).