2009 GOLDEN PITON AWARDS

Trad

PAMELA PACK

Mentally recreate the painful, pumpy insecurity of being wedged inside an offwidth. Now imagine you’re completely upside down in that wide, flaring crack. And finally imagine you must swing down from that inverted position and then back up — rotating a total of 360 degrees — into an inverted position. That’s just a sampling of the insane moves Pamela Pack wrestled with during her likely first free ascent of Gabriel, a solid-5.13 wide-crack beastie at Angel’s Landing, Zion National Park.

Starting deep in a sandstone cave, the 65-foot fissure travels out a nearly horizontal belly for 40 feet and then up a grovelly headwall. Over the years, many “wizards of the wide” have attempted this fearsome OW, considered by some the nation’s toughest offwidth roof. After projecting the route for several-week stints over the course of 18 months, Pack redpointed it mid-November 2009, calling it her most difficult to date.

With a slew of other monster offwidths under her belt — including a 2008 onsight of Vedauwoo’s notorious Lucille (5.12+) — Pack is quickly chickenwinging, inverting, kneebarring, and squeeze-chimneying her way to the top of the trad game, adding grace to the grovel along the way.

Honorable Mentions:

• Justin Edl, for his first ascent of the 50-foot flared splitter Home on the Range (5.14-), Coyote Rocks, Vedauwoo — the hardest trad pitch at Vedauwoo.
• Matt Wilder, for his FA of Cheating Reality (5.14a R), a fantastical, gear-only scarefest up the Devil’s Thumb, Flatirons, Colorado, headpointed on October 17.