I was tempted to stop climbing altogether. At the very least, I wanted to quit off-width. I lost a lot of enthusiasm for wide climbing and felt like my naïve, hopeful “gumby” phase was over. That phase is special to me because being new at something was all about the experience, everything is awesome, and I learn with zero expectations. I was so excited to climb with anyone who showed even a hint of interest in wide climbing.
I debated internally about quitting. I went back and forth between never wanting to place another big cam again and staying the course to see how far I could go in off-width climbing. It felt like I fell in love with a genre of climbing, only to immediately step into a big pile of cow crap.
Note: this is an excerpt from Mary Eden’s piece Wide Tour. The full piece is published in Volume 25
Banner photo of the author by Mercadi Carlson
Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to prove I couldn’t be pushed out of a genre I had started to enjoy. That I did indeed have a backbone. Stopping would only make it easier for other girls like me to have that hopeful gumby phase snuffed out early. So, I chose to stay—and embark on a Wide Tour.
The idea was simple: compile and complete a thorough spreadsheet of all the off-widths I had heard about, whether through word of mouth or Mountain Project, that were known to be crazy, hard, or educational. My goal was to finish this seemingly impossible list and help make off-width climbing a little less toxic. When I completed the list, I planned to move on to another area of weakness in my climbing, fully devoting myself to another style in the constant pursuit of always being a student, never a master.
I developed an attitude of putting my head down and digging deep. In the span of a couple of years, this got me through 131 off-widths on my list, from Gabriel, a 5.13 off-width roof in Zion, to Craig Luebben’s Dream Line, the best 5.12 off-width I’ve ever done.
During one short Vedauwoo trip, I picked up little Auden from his parents. Auden, at the time, was a sixteen-year-old crusher who I first guided outside for one of his first trad climbing experiences one year before. He could almost count on one hand the number of times he’d been outside climbing, but he was such a promising young climber that I convinced his parents to let me mentor him for two weeks.
Auden was naïvely excited to climb off-widths. He dreamed of climbing Squat, a notorious, old-school Bob Scarpelli route. I decided that we’d warm Auden up by taking him to The Forever War and letting him do the off-widths next door as well.
Unfortunately, Auden lost all of his skin on day one. His toenails fell off. His back skin was obliterated. Over the next two weeks, however, I got to usher Auden through the pain, discomfort, and fear into being the only sixteen-year-old I’ve ever heard of sending Squat, a hard 5.12 Vedauwoo invert off-width test piece. After celebrating his send, I took time for myself afterward to reflect. I felt so overwhelmingly proud I cried. I couldn’t stop bragging to everyone I could, like I was Phil at the end of Disney’s Hercules. His send meant more to me than anything else I had done that summer; I felt like I made off-width a fun and supportive activity for someone.
Teaching Auden inspired me so much that I started to teach off-width climbing camps. Over the years, I had been asked by many of my guiding clients to host off-width-specific clinics, but I felt unmotivated to do so. I had up to this point waffled with jaded dislike of the style versus my desire to make the sport what I wish I had gotten to experience. After the experience with Auden, I felt my hesitancy was selfish, so I started teaching off-width with some of the best and nicest off-width climbers I knew: Danny Parker and Ashley Cracroft.
I am so grateful that we started teaching those. I have met so many people who are just as excited as Mercadi and I once were. One in particular stood out due to her rabid enthusiasm: Sam MacIlwaine. In an off-width camp, she told me she wanted to do her first trad lead, which she did with my guidance. Since then I’ve had the pleasure and honor of being there for her first 5.11, 5.12, and 5.13 off-width sends. I know she is going to go so far in more than off-width and am waiting on the edge of my seat to see what comes next.
I hope that Samantha’s relationship with off-width becomes the future and the standard. She truly loves the genre and is ridiculously good at it. She feels proud to call herself an off-width climber. I hope that people like her and Auden are the future of the sport.
Watching my students push their limits and teaching the style with really nice and supportive people made me stoked to continue pushing my own off-width skills. In my own off-width journey, I just had four notable routes left on my list, which also happened to be the hardest: Belly Full of Bad Berries, a classic 5.13 Indian Creek invert test piece; Earle Struggs, a 5.13 invert off-width route in Joshua Tree; The Mechanical Bull, a 5.13 super steep Sedona, Arizona, challenge; and The Price of Evil, the hardest and most unpleasant 5.13 off-width in Indian Creek.
Of the big four remaining on my list, I first became intrigued by Patrick Kingsbury’s Mechanical Bull. Knowing the Bull’s difficulty from watching others like Keisuke Kmizuno, who took a full season to send it, and Tom Paul Randall, who sent it during his second session, I decided to forgo inverting.
Over the years, I had found that inverting strains my neck painfully from too many years of guiding. I approached the climb with a straight-in arm-barring technique instead. The Mechanical Bull gets sun for most of the day and requires a one-hour approach. I wanted to make sure I was actually fit enough for the route due to its general faff of a location so I focused on a lot of really cool off-widths around Arizona.
I felt really excited about my chances going out there with Tom because we both did very well in our first session; in the second session, in which he sent, I fell at the last possible move. Actually, I think I did this because of a nice finishing hold that was sneakily hiding under Tom’s shoe as he was very kindly taking cool pictures of me. Buoyed by my progress, knowledge of a good last hold, and my confidence in my aggressively high and twisted inside leg kicks, I combined a bottom leg bar/heel toe with overhung arm bars and snagged the redpoint on my third session.
Motivated by this accomplishment, I reached out to a friendly stranger to guide me to Mason’s Hondo off-width. This off-width caught my eye because of how much Mason Earle struggled to send it during his first ascent. I had developed a deep respect for Mason’s routes over the years and knew that anything he had to fight for would give me a run for my money.
Meeting Cole, who filmed and showed Mason the wide route a few years before, was awesome. I felt grateful to be walked up to the route and treated so kindly by locals. I did, however, feel really nervous climbing in front of new people, especially with the added pressure of climbing in front of a camera. I’m not as open and comfortable with people as I used to be. But the experience was awesome overall, and I ended up making new friends. Coach Cole, as he was affectionately called, was flabbergasted by my stubborn insistence that I was not going to invert the obvious overhung off-width. I tried using similar beta I had been successful with on the Mechanical Bull: high kicks and aggressive arm bars.
But when that failed, I became so desperate that I tried to bypass the crux section with a head jam. This ended up being terrifying, as well as super scrapy on my face and ears. On my third day of working the route, I finally gave in and tried the invert that Cole was insistent I should try. It went, and I cheerfully topped out the off-width with a successful redpoint. Although I didn’t spend a lot of time on the route, I definitely felt humbled.
After the Mechanical Bull and Earle Struggs, all of the test pieces that I had completed up to that point felt like child’s play in comparison. Facing Mason’s and Kingsbury’s off-widths had revealed the true beast of the off-width-tour challenge. These two routes had me wondering if I had what it took to tackle my next big target: Belly Full of Bad Berries.
My journey took an unexpected turn when I had to undergo wrist surgery. My wrist problems had developed due to an improper warm-up on a face pitch in Yosemite back in 2020. The injury had inadvertently steered me more fully toward my Wide Tour, as climbing moves I loved the most, like crimping, bouldering, and finger cracks, became super painful. Off-width climbing proved to be less taxing on my injured wrist, and whenever my injury flared up, I found solace in ticking off-width routes off my Wide Tour list and teaching off-width climbing. I definitely avoided fully taking care of my injury because I was afraid of surgery. Surgery is scary! In the end, it was the desire to do routes like Necronomicon, 14a, that I found to be super inspiring, which led to me finally going under the knife.
After my surgery and once I received medical clearance for “light activity,” I started projecting Belly Full of Bad Berries. I figured that this would be a great way to ease back into climbing shape. The route’s lack of strenuous holds or wrist-twisting moves made it make sense to me at the time. Even though, looking back, it didn’t make sense at all to jump right back into the deep end.
I had this weird idea that I wanted to do Belly Full in a unique way. I wanted to try to opt in for a straight-in/right-side-up approach instead of going upside-down, as was standard for Belly Full. I had started to think about what is really possible with calf-locking and staying vertical. Trying to stay right-side-up was mainly to spare me from the pain I always got in my neck on overhung routes. I was also curious at the idea of trying inverts in a blue-collar style. Over the years, I had honed the skill of calf-locking on overhung cracks and realized that calf locks were essentially high and deep foot jams aligned with the butterfly stack. One foot pushed from underneath while the other jammed high and pulled in, elevating me and releasing my hand stack to push it higher before the bottom foot propelled me up so I could elevate the high jammed foot even farther and deeper.
When I verbalized these ideas out loud, my friend Tom Randall ribbed me that I should stop trying to climb like it was the 1970s. This solidified my commitment to being a stubborn weirdo. I love proving him wrong and generally being a loving pain in his arse.
It took me six sessions that spring to redpoint Belly Full using my straight-in beta. When I arrived at the last 6–10 feet, where my knee finally went in the 5s, I vividly remember knowing I had it. I was so excited I yelled; I felt all the pent up energy from my surgery explode out of me. That 5s section signaled the end of the calf locks and the weird pod that seemed to love to spit me out. Luckily, despite the early celebration, I was able to finish the route and successfully clip the chains.
Despite the fact that I had never seen a calf so bruised as mine was coming off of Belly Full, I felt like taking on the right-side-up challenge to get fit after my surgery was perfect for me. Not only did I feel strong and challenged but also I learned that there is a ton of nuance to calf-locking and tight knees that I’ve since taken and employed on many other test pieces in similar angles and sizes.
Finishing Belly Full of Bad Berries and other outlier off-widths on my list meant that it was finally time for the last off-width on my spreadsheet: The Price of Evil, established by Mason Earle.
I was nervous but also so ready. Encounters with Mason Earle’s off-widths always pushed me to my limits. Over time, I had learned that a climb’s difficulty wasn’t solely determined by its grade; the climber who established it also played a significant role. This fact was doubly true in off-width climbing. Some grades are way too inflated, others accurate—and then there’s Mason, who revels in downplaying the challenge. My 2020 scouting attempt on the Price of Evil had left me with the knowledge that I had no idea how to climb the dirty butt crack. I had saved it for last because I knew it was going to take the most education to accomplish.
In May 2023, with nervous excitement, I decided to hit up Mason and tell him I was stoked on his hardest desert off-width. He was enthusiastically supportive and even asked me if he could come watch one of my sessions.
The Price of Evil required a combination of all the techniques I had learned in my off-width tour. Horizontal arm bars, deep twisted leg bars, high foot jams, insecure fists, crappy stacks, painful calf locks, and untrustworthy chicken wings. On my second session that season, I warmed up on the approach pitch and got ready for battle at the belay. Mason was watching from the car, and I became so nervous. I ended up letting the butterflies overcome me on the first go, but I came down, cleaned, and recovered for forty-five minutes by cracking jokes with my ever-patient climbing partner. I ended up sending it my second go on that session. Don’t be fooled by the small number of sessions. I only managed to climb it that quickly by having climbed every other off-width on my Wide Tour list. The learning curve was steep, so when the time came to tackle Mason’s toughest off-width FA, I was as prepared as I could be.
Strangely, as I clipped the chains of the Price of Evil, the final climb on my Wide Tour, an unexpected feeling of disappointment washed over me. There was no grand sense of accomplishment, just a sense of regularity in the act of climbing. Paradoxically, I found myself slightly bummed that the journey had come to an end. I had finished my spreadsheet. What would I do without this map to keep me on track?
As I packed up my gear, thoughts of off-widths not included on the master list occasionally crossed my mind. I felt ready to move on to the next challenge, and I realized I wanted a general off-width retirement but not a complete departure. I’ve also formed the controversial opinion that test piece desert off-widths (The Price of Evil, Dreamline, Belly Full of Bad Berries, The Cleaver) are more challenging than “hard” Vedauwoo off-widths.
During my Wide Tour, an interesting transformation occurred. I became known exclusively as an “off-width climber,” regardless of the fact that OW isn’t my strongest style. In reality, I am not as proficient in off-width climbing as I am in roof cracks, fingers, or bouldering. It seems that once you embrace what no one else wants to do, you’re suddenly labeled as “that guy.” As I embark on new adventures, I’m constantly reminding others that climbing isn’t confined to a single style or label; it’s a journey of discovery, learning, and growth.
Along the way I also realized that off-width climbing wasn’t particularly harder than other genres and definitely isn’t scary. It was a generally really safe, comfortable style of crack climbing. With VGs, Merlin Cams, BD wide Cams, and bros, you are able to mostly be on toprope for most hard off-width routes. Even with the invert style, you’re never that far away from a large cam or bolt.
I also came to feel like off-width climbing is a very healing version of crack climbing. Its full-body movement and big-muscle-group usage make it friendly to train for. I feel like it’s an accessible genre of the sport for people who learned how to climb later in life and don’t have crazy-strong comp-kid fingers. The hardest part of off-widthing is the initial learning curve; after that, the style becomes almost easier than any other style in climbing.
I had developed a poor opinion of off-width climbing, and I really struggled with that. I’d feel embarrassed if someone called me an off-width climber. It’s unfair to the genre because it actually is fun when you get past the initial struggle-bus learning curve. It’s unique and weird. It’s fun to teach people how to climb it and watch them progress quickly through the grades.
My proudest accomplishments in climbing are the people I’ve mentored and who have, in my opinion, caught up or surpassed me in many ways.
My personal goal, as I age, is to keep the sport accessible, showing that bullying and gatekeeping cannot drive away everyone.
Ultimately, to me, off-width climbing is about more than just the physical act of climbing. It is about embracing the unusual, challenging norms and fostering a supportive community. The cracks may be wide, but the opportunities for personal growth are even wider. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll summon the courage to climb the route I was too fearful to add to my spreadsheet: The Century Crack.
Mary Eden is a climber and artist based in the American West. She has sent some of the most challenging crack climbs in the US, including Necronomicon (5.14a) and Black Mamba (5.14b). In addition to her climbing achievements, Mary is an avid photographer, painter, and occasional writer with a marketing degree. She also balances her passions with a desk job. You can follow her adventures on Instagram @tradprincess.
