Offwidths and New Friends

Starting up the chimney on Right Eliminate

Nobody likes climbing off-widths! (except for a few sick people like myself).  Offwidth cracks are too big to get a fist jam, and too small to cram your body inside - the resulting climbing method would be difficult to describe accurately but is often referred to as "thrutching".  If done with good technique, it isn't always as bad as it sounds, but for most, it is less than graceful.  Nonetheless, I like it and wanted to bring my big gear to climb some wide cracks in Europe.  In the end, I had to leave the gear behind for a handful of good reasons.  First, the obvious - that crap is bulky, heavy and expensive.  Second, I would have to carry it for the duration our our 3 month trip.  And strike three, the final nail in the coffin - Amy is normal; which means she doesn't want to climb offwidths (I don't blame her).  So, when on our second day of climbing on the Gritstone, I spied a #5 Camalot sitting on someones pack, I got excited, and even more excited when I noticed it's big brother #6 Camalot sitting near it.  While I belayed our friend and amazing host Rob up his successful onsite, I get to know local climbers Ben and Hannah. We hit it off immediately (probably due to our love of all things climbing), and Hannah who owns the cams offers to let me (total stranger from out of town with unkept hair and beard) borrow her big cams for the week. WOW!

Hannah works at the gear shop in Hathersage and Amy and I meet her there the next morning to collect the big gear and prepare to suffer on some Gritstone offwidths.  I had my eye on 5 beautiful wide cracks and I started with the easiest one which was more of a flaring chimney: The Peapod. This went fairly well and was followed by Hercules, which also went well.  And then... Elder Crack.  This climb beat me savagely.  After working the crux for what seemed like 30 minutes and fighting up the last of the difficulties, I arrived at the top with an successful onsite which felt more like surviving a motorcycle crash. The Left and Right Eliminates would have to wait for another day as I was out of steam.

Ben after climbing the Right Eliminate

Within a few days we were meeting with our new friends regularly and meeting more of their friends as well and a day climbing together was planned. A few days away from the wide cracks to recover sent us all the the finger-cracks for a beautiful day followed by beers at the pub. One last day with the big gear sent me back to Curbar with Ben to complete my offwidth fix. Rob had described the Right Eliminate as a "grim offwidth struggle" and the guidebook confirmed this with stories of arriving at the top wretching and exhausted.  At E3 the grade roughly translated to 511a or b which would be my hardest gear lead ever. The beginning chimney went with ease and I was all smiles. The crux however is exiting the chimney via it's roof top wide crack.  Protected by a #5 Camalot I fell and rested as I tried new methods to climb this monster crack: left side in, right side in, hand stacks, knee and elbow jams, face holds. In the end an Arm bar got me past the crux but only led to more difficult terrain and I fell again, resting on the #6 Camalot this time.  I probably rested for 10 minutes before I had regained enough strength to complete the climb. After my hobble to the top, I cleaned the gear and Ben tried it with about the same level of success, falling and resting as me.  We had both earned some rest and so we loaned the gear to some other climber's and watched them struggle on Elder Crack. Eventually I got my energy back and climbed Left Eliminate, the last tick on my tour of Grit's wide. 

I feel so blessed to have met such great people to climb with and to have climbed one of my favorite styles of crack. Ben, Hannah, Amy and I went off to a proper English pub to enjoy each others company before we had to travel on.