unsung angels
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Pamela Pack
Photo by: Patrick Kingsbury
Pamela Pack frees new 5.13 offwidth in Zion.
It’s not as though a first-class roster of offwidth masters haven’t tried this overhanging 65-foot maw before. The fearsome crack, located in Zion National Park, had, after all, garnered a reputation for being the hardest offwidth roof in the U.S. Such strong climbers as Stevie Haston, John Varco and Andres Marin have all put in efforts to free the crack—which ranges from 60-degrees overhanging to dead horizontal. But in mid November, Pamela Pack, with her specialty in unlocking core-sapping, painful and difficult offwidths, made the probable first free ascent of Gabriel (5.13).
Gabriel is found in a cave on Angel’s Landing, and shares the start with an old aid climb from the 1980s—while the aid climb begins by tunneling out a chimney deep in the cave, Gabriel tackles the imposing belly of the roof.
As news of Pack’s ascent trickled into the community, hearsay from a single source emerged that Gabriel had actually already seen as many as three free ascents. Both Pack and her climbing partner, Patrick Kingsbury, were skeptical—based on the lack of chalk, the fact that no one else had heard of these ascents, and the fact that Pack’s bail ‘biner was left on one of the bolts from a prior trip.
Pack, a cartographer who spends half the year working at sea in Alaska, and who has flashed the fearsome and famous 5.12+ offwidth Lucille, in Vedauwoo, is emerging as one of the foremost trad climbers in the U.S. She says that Gabriel is her most difficult ascent to date, and required a “full arsenal of offwidth techniques, including full-body inversions, difficult pivots, horizontal chicken wings, arm-bars, kneebars, and a final 20-feet of blue-collar groveling. There is another unique move in the middle of the route which requires dropping out of a full inversion and swinging through 360 degrees back into another full inversion, or, ‘circumleavittation!’”
Pack projected the route for three-month stints over the course of the last three years. She spent this fall doing nothing but climbing (often onsight) 5.12 and 5.13 offwidths around the country with her partner, Patrick Kingsbury, who Pack credits as being “easily the best offwidth climbing partner I’ve had.”
Feeling fit from all that climbing, she spent three more weeks on Gabriel before finally redpointing it.
“I climbed the entire route fully or partially inverted,” she says. “The falls are scary on questionable gear, [and I faced] potential ground falls almost the entire length of the route.”
One of the biggest cruxes of the route was dialing in the protection, which included three bolts, Big Bros and 9” Valley Giants. Through the business part of the route, Pack pre-placed protection. She explains: “It would be extremely difficult to place all the gear on lead as the gear needs to be placed very deep in the flared crack, is easily kicked out and needs to be placed blindly from an inverted position. Even clipping the three bolts and the [pre-placed] gear is difficult … you pull out so much rope that you could take a groundfall if you miss the clip. It is possible to place gear on lead in the last 20 feet of the route, which is what I did while projecting Gabriel, and still took a 30-foot inverted pendulum fall!”
During the redpoint, Pack skipped those last placements and just went for it.
After this success, Stevie Haston has supplied Pack with a list of his abandoned offwidths to throw herself at. She says her next project requires 18 Wild Country #6 cams.
Check out Rock and Ice Issue 184 for an exclusive look at Pamela Pack on Gabriel.
—Andrew Bisharat
It’s not as though a first-class roster of offwidth masters haven’t tried this overhanging 65-foot maw before. The fearsome crack, located in Zion National Park, had, after all, garnered a reputation for being the hardest offwidth roof in the U.S. Such strong climbers as Stevie Haston, John Varco and Andres Marin have all put in efforts to free the crack—which ranges from 60-degrees overhanging to dead horizontal. But in mid November, Pamela Pack, with her specialty in unlocking core-sapping, painful and difficult offwidths, made the probable first free ascent of Gabriel (5.13).
Gabriel is found in a cave on Angel’s Landing, and shares the start with an old aid climb from the 1980s—while the aid climb begins by tunneling out a chimney deep in the cave, Gabriel tackles the imposing belly of the roof.
As news of Pack’s ascent trickled into the community, hearsay from a single source emerged that Gabriel had actually already seen as many as three free ascents. Both Pack and her climbing partner, Patrick Kingsbury, were skeptical—based on the lack of chalk, the fact that no one else had heard of these ascents, and the fact that Pack’s bail ‘biner was left on one of the bolts from a prior trip.
Pack, a cartographer who spends half the year working at sea in Alaska, and who has flashed the fearsome and famous 5.12+ offwidth Lucille, in Vedauwoo, is emerging as one of the foremost trad climbers in the U.S. She says that Gabriel is her most difficult ascent to date, and required a “full arsenal of offwidth techniques, including full-body inversions, difficult pivots, horizontal chicken wings, arm-bars, kneebars, and a final 20-feet of blue-collar groveling. There is another unique move in the middle of the route which requires dropping out of a full inversion and swinging through 360 degrees back into another full inversion, or, ‘circumleavittation!’”
Pack projected the route for three-month stints over the course of the last three years. She spent this fall doing nothing but climbing (often onsight) 5.12 and 5.13 offwidths around the country with her partner, Patrick Kingsbury, who Pack credits as being “easily the best offwidth climbing partner I’ve had.”
Feeling fit from all that climbing, she spent three more weeks on Gabriel before finally redpointing it.
“I climbed the entire route fully or partially inverted,” she says. “The falls are scary on questionable gear, [and I faced] potential ground falls almost the entire length of the route.”
One of the biggest cruxes of the route was dialing in the protection, which included three bolts, Big Bros and 9” Valley Giants. Through the business part of the route, Pack pre-placed protection. She explains: “It would be extremely difficult to place all the gear on lead as the gear needs to be placed very deep in the flared crack, is easily kicked out and needs to be placed blindly from an inverted position. Even clipping the three bolts and the [pre-placed] gear is difficult … you pull out so much rope that you could take a groundfall if you miss the clip. It is possible to place gear on lead in the last 20 feet of the route, which is what I did while projecting Gabriel, and still took a 30-foot inverted pendulum fall!”
During the redpoint, Pack skipped those last placements and just went for it.
After this success, Stevie Haston has supplied Pack with a list of his abandoned offwidths to throw herself at. She says her next project requires 18 Wild Country #6 cams.
Check out Rock and Ice Issue 184 for an exclusive look at Pamela Pack on Gabriel.
—Andrew Bisharat
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