One Mile Wide with Art of Offwidth Instructor Mike Largent
Written By Art of Offwidth Instructor Mike Largent
Mike Onsighting “Yes, I Am” (5.12a)
I’m in Indian Creek, Utah. It’s my FIRST TIME. My friend Mitch puts up a climb called Low Cholesterol. Mitch has a REAL hard time getting up this thing, but he does it. I’m staring at this crack climb. I’m in my batman tights. Tights with Batman print on them. The old timey cartoon. It’s got pics of Batman and a bunch of words like Bang POW and Pew pew. I thought, MAN I LOOK FAST IN THESE. Just so hip and so cool and so— Oh who’s that? They know what they’re doing. “Hi I’m Mike these are my batman tights!” They are waiting on me to climb this, because they are gonna climb it and they actually know how.
Imagine you're at an astrophysics convention before attendees show up. You get on stage just joking around with the mic. You’re pretending. Remember that? Pretending? In the middle of your pretending, Stephen Hawking, and his whole entourage show up. Just rap music BLARING. They take a seat. Rap music cuts. Hawking says “What you got fool?!” That is what this felt like. I start top roping this. No. Top roping gives this attempt more credit than it deserves. I start violently convulsing upward on Low Cholesterol in my Batman tights in front of Hawking and his minions. That’s a lie. What I did to that crack — it was bad! I made Mitch’s attempt look like Russian Ballet. I get to the bottom I get lowered down in my shame we pack up our things we tuck our tails and we begin walking away. As I’m walking away I look back and I see the guy who was planning on leading it. It’s rhythmic. He’s going like up in predictable increments. He’s not really that out of breath. He’s just moving up very comfortably and I think to myself — “what ARE you?!” He turns to me and he says: “I’m Batman.”
I learned three from this encounter:
One, Wide Climbing is for superheroes.
Two, I am not a superhero.
Three, I now really wanna be a superhero. I wanna be Batman!
If I’m gonna climb like Batman, I’ve got to put a few more pieces together. Supposedly there this whole technique to that nightmare. Technique that makes it less of a nightmare.
Low Cholesterol makes me a bit gun shy in the face of these wide cracks. I don’t even know what I don’t know. YouTube videos and blogs can’t tell my muscles how to move. I need mileage. Each trip to the creek I try at least one offwidth. First I seek out 5.9 offwidth. There aren’t many. I climbed the Way Nutter at Way Rambo before it was made off limits. I tried Cowgirls Like ‘Em Big at Pistol Whipped. I hung all over it. I climbed 6 more between 5.9 and 5.11 including Big Baby (a shit show) before I was able to flash a 5.10: Hoof Prints at High Horse Wall.
In 2020 5.11 flashes became more and more common. I went from one OW per trip to one per day. 2020’s proudest flash was Mega Bucks. It’s a solid 5.11 and goes for 150 feet. A true monster. Requiring not only text book technique but an ability to active rest, pace, and dig really, really deep. It requires an iron will that pulls me from “I can’t” to “keep going.” It’s the end of the day and my partner, an older hardened finger crack officionado, is hearing me waiver. “I don’t quite feel 100%. It’s a little late. I know the wise choice is to come back to this,” I tell him. “How old are you?” He asks. “32.” I tell him. “That’s way too young to make wise choices.” I grin. “Flake it.” I tell him. The bottom had me a bit nervous as it started with ones that might’ve been 75’s, a really hard size for me. I cruise through the ones, very relieved. It’s an impossible distance to the chains but I know how to close that distance. Having climbed the Dentist Chair and For the Forefathers, I knew that monsters can be tamed. That they do, indeed, end. This is important experiential knowledge. It’s important to remember when considering a take or giving up. It can mean the difference between a flash and a fail: my only two options. I work up the fives like a pubescent boy trying to remove a bra. No one enjoyed it. Then sixes. Fives and sixes. The book describes a jug toward the end the produces the same feeling Christopher Columbus felt when he finally spotted land. I grab it. I yell “I SEE YOU CHRISTOPHER!” A few more polished heel-toe-armbar-gaston combos and I’m at the chains. We’d decided on the ground that it’d be easiest for me to belay him from the top. He pulled on gear, swore and grunted his way up to me.
In the early season of 2021 I kept grinding. I had no idea the mile was coming so I simply continued my now solidified creek routine: find wide things and climb them. At this point I had too many 5.11 flashes to keep considering them a serious challenge. I was coasting. A general rule in OW is that if a climb is harder than 5.11 it’s either inverted or gets a 5.12 because of 5.12 fingers. I was not prepared to do either. To this point, I’d learned everything myself: how to bump, how to heel toe, how to stack etc. Learning to invert on gear by myself felt like a bad plan. Leading fingers still does not appeal to me. All told, I had about a mile of experience going into May.
There’s another thing I do that brings me to climb the mile. I’m an actor. With a team of expert theatre makers, I create theatrical performances based on big efforts in the mountains. I do this for my theatre company: Theatre of the Wild. It was time for me to create a new show. To create a new show I need a new challenge. The most I’ve lead in the creek in a day is four routes. What if those were all offwidth!? That might be hard but it needs to be bigger to be theatre worthy. I could do that all three days of my weekend! Still feels a bit one-off. Any schmuck could suffer through that. I could do EVERY weekend in may! There are FIVE weekends in may!? Yes. Math math math. That’s a mile!
Ok. I’ve got the idea. I want it to mean something. I can make this bigger than me. Bigger than a fist. Bigger than me! I reach out to the Hive. The Hive is a non profit in Durango that helps young people. They provide a free space for creating art, playing music, skate boarding. Mentorship. They create a gofundme and I’m off to the races. The sweaty, friction, inch-worm races.
Suzie catches ALL of them on the first weekend. She’s my rock. I’m pleasantly surprised at how well my body holds up. We get rained out on May 3rd. It’s too early for this big of a set back. FOUR PITCHES BEHIND.
My life between weekends is a full time construction job. It’s breaking down camp gear and then repacking camp gear. It’s arranging a vehicle to borrow as mine’s in the shop. It’s a lot of food prep. It’s not climbing offwidth, but it’s not rest. After the first weekend my body was wrecked, but ready to go by Saturday. After the second weekend it was mildly sore and by the third weekend I wasn’t getting sore.
During the week word spreads through Durango and people I’ve never met are offering to help with the effort. By the second weekend I’ve got a crew. By the third weekend two offwidth legends have joined the cause: Pam Pack and Devin Fin. Climbing with them changed the way I saw myself, the way I saw climbing, and the way I climb offwidth. With these two by my side I could get up anything. They say I’m really strong. I must be really strong!
There are a few days where they aren’t there. They aren’t there and Suzie is not there. I’m grumpy. I’m tired. I was doing my best not to take my shitty mood out on my belayers.
We developed a routine at the wall. We’d find my first lead. We’d send someone to find the next and the next. We have no time to waste scouting the wall. In any other month the routine was to put up something wide then coach or cheer whoever wanted to try it. Not this month. People could top rope these lines if I had a rope and a belayer for the next climb. People did. Friends and acquaintances are figuring. It. Out. One inch at a time. They’re bonding. They’re laughing. They’re working together for this thing that’s bigger than all of us. If the money never does Durango youth any good, I can sleep easy knowing that so many good things came from the effort.
The month culminated at the Mayor. Described as 150’ of -5.12 offwidth, the Mayor is a monster. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to go after it had Pam not decided to join this cause. The Mayor is hard. Starts with slightly overhanging 5s. I now know how to calf lock, so I cruise it. I find a rest and prepare for the fight of my life. I move up, hardened by the month leading up to this. The sixes are like old friends. I’m VERY comfortable in them. There’s a lip inside that should feel more helpful than it does. I’m keeping my heart rate down. I’m staying ahead of the pump. Heel toe, internal narrow frog feet, arm bar, gaston. Release arm bar, pull up rope, hold rope with gaston, bump 6, lock arm bar-gaston, move narrow frog 8 inches, lock narrow frog, relax armbar gaston, stand on narrow frog. Release arm bar, pull up rope, hold rope with gaston, bump 6, lock arm bar-gaston, move narrow frog 8 inches, lock narrow frog, relax armbar gaston, stand on narrow frog. This changes when it goes to 7s. It goes back to sixes just before it zig zags. The zig zags demand attention and they’re at the top of this monster. Earlier this spring I climbed David. David taught me that in offwidth zig zags offwidth technique…works? The brain’s got to do some rocket science, but it does. It works. As long as I can stay present and positive I can account for: do I heel toe that? Does a heel toe work at that angle? How do I stay in? How do I bump my stack? Should I stack? Should I still bump this cam? Do I have enough power reserve to pul that off? Which way do I lean? Going from crack to offwidth is like going from walking to tap dancing. If the OW crack changes angles, zig zags, changes aspect or becomes more than vertical, it’s like tap dancing while juggling chain saws. I don’t know many tap dancing chainsaw jugglers, but I’ll bet they stay present with breath and positive with mantras. Works for me.
I did it. I flashed the Mayor. I lead 5305 feet of offwidth. May was a success. While I have Pam and Devin to thank for pushing me further, I can say with certainty that Suzie is the actual hero of my story.
Fast forward to fall 2021. I’ve officially decided to put 11’s mostly behind me. There’s an invert route that is supposed to be the best intro to invert in the Creek. It’s called Brother from Another Planet -5.12. Suzie and I walked up to it. She heard me waivering “there’s other stuff up here we can climb.” “You don’t want to climb Brother?” She asks. I tell her, “Well I wanted someone around who’s done it.” She replies, “You never needed that before.” I grin, rack up, and make a total shit show of that climb; but I’m there. I’m doing it. I know I can, and so does she, and that’s all I need.
Mike Largent M.F.A.
Agent: Big Fish Talent
Knight Thompson Dialect Coach
Artistic Director of Theatre of the Wild
