Wide cracks at NRG

Looking for beta for wide practice at the New. 5.8 to 10ish. Which areas have a higher concentration of fist/off/squeeze cracks?

Also looking for potential partners with a similar masochistic streak.

Cheers

V.

I asked a similar question on RC.com:

rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/fo…;search_string=NRG;#2381823

Where do you live?

Sweet, thanks.

I am in Durham, NC. You?

well victor, the nrg really doesnt have that many bunched together. thier between everything else.
go to the bridge buttress area. zag 5.8, butterbeans 5.10a, easily flakey 5.6, jaws 5.9, chockstone 5.9, hortons tree 5.7, the layback 5.9, undercling 5.10b, marionette 5.11c, penalty situation 5.8.
all great routes!
all are cracks from finger-width to offwidths!
gimme a shout i'll climb them again!!!

Chapel Hill. Check your emails.

This is all from memory, and I haven't been to the New in about 6 years, so forgive me if some of this is wrong
Junkyard:
5.6 Distortionist, a bit of wide weirdness
5.9 Contortionist, pretty good example of wideness the whole way
5.11a Stuck in Another Dimension, you can top rope this one pretty easily if you don't want to lead it.

Endless Wall:
5.10b STANC, (upstream a short bit from Honeymooners Ladders) never done it, but it looks intimidating
5.10a Southern Hospitality, (downstream a short bit from Honeymooners I think) also never done it, but watched a friend struggle on it.
5.6 or so Crescent Moon (almost forgot this one)
5.10a Crack a Smile, (at Diamond Point) one of my first wide ones and a good intro to the type.
5.9 Smooth Operator (Fern Point) never done this but looks fisty
5.9 Diversity in Microcosm (Fern Point) a little bit of everything (hence the name) including wideness

Bridge Buttress:
5.10a Butterbeans, also good for an intro

Fern Butress:
5.10d Shiney Faces - a short section of wideness to flaring fingers
5.5 - Afternoon Delight - goes to the summit of a small pinacle
5.9 - ??? name escapes me (Fourgasm?) anyway, just a touch downstream of the orchard wall, right near the route called Sometimes a Great Notion are two routes that look wide and weird, both are 5.9, followed one, don't remember much about it

Beauty Mountain:
5.8 Momma's Squeeze Box - I top roped this one because I didn't have enough big gear
5.8 - Screamer Crack - more of a layback up a wide low angle crack
5.9 Happy Hands a bit of fists
5.10b Spiderwand/Wham Bam -these share a start that is overhanging #3 camalot (cupped hand jams for me)
5.10? Lone Rhinocerus -looks heinous, doesn't look 5.10, don't know anyone who has done it, but it is WIDE

And if you want a real buttkicker of a wide crack
Kaymoor Area (near White Lightning and Thunderstruck)
5.11 Jane Fonda's Total Body Workout - very tough route
if I remember any others I'll post again

NRG is great for this kind of crack climbing. That's about all I do when I head up there these days. Endless Wall probably has the highest concentration.

One great route is Crimes Of Fashion. It has a good bit of pseudo-wideness, and is a stellar pitch (especially if you can get someone else to do it first and clean out the spider webs...).

One other masochistic route not mentioned, probably because of its 5.11 start, but well worth doing, is New Fangled Dangle. Hard and funky start to a stellar thin hands corner.

I almost flipped out when I didn't see Stuck in Another Dimension but I found it on my second look. Excellent route. Also at Junkyard is New River Gunks, which has one wide move at the top.

Jane Fonda's looks menacing. There is another climb down there, just left of Thunderstruck and White Lightening. It starts in a roof, then goes to vertical hands. The roof part is juggy with a few wide crack parts.

IIRC South Nuttall has a few adventure cracks/chimneys, and they are all LONG.

nbrown wrote:NRG is great for this kind of crack climbing. That's about all I do when I head up there these days. Endless Wall probably has the highest concentration. One great route is Crimes Of Fashion. It has a good bit of pseudo-wideness, and is a stellar pitch (especially if you can get someone else to do it first and clean out the spider webs...). One other masochistic route not mentioned, probably because of its 5.11 start, but well worth doing, is New Fangled Dangle. Hard and funky start to a stellar thin hands corner.

I want the beta on New Fangled Dangle. I've been eyeing that climb for a year now.

For what it's worth, I'll throw in more praise for Stuck in Another Dimension. It's a stellar route (and one of my favorites), but you'll want to puke when you get off of it if you're not used to the physicality of it.

Ryan Williams wrote: There is another climb down there, just left of Thunderstruck and White Lightening. It starts in a roof, then goes to vertical hands. The roof part is juggy with a few wide crack parts. IIRC South Nuttall has a few adventure cracks/chimneys, and they are all LONG.

The climb you are talking about is called The Shining, and is really good.
I can't believe I forgot about South Nuttall, where there are a ton of wide things, The Abyss comes to mind. Never done any of the wide things out there, but they look intimidating.
By the way the my favorite trad route I ever did at NRG is Finger Crack in White Corner and it out at South Nutall.

Sam Stephens wrote: I want the beta on New Fangled Dangle.

So this is from the deep recesses of my memory, but I seem to remember facing right side in. I got a fist jam in the back of the flare with my right hand, some kind of crimp with my left and doing a pull up until I could get my feet on some holds below the roof, which helped me keep my back on the right side of the corner. Begin wriggling until you can get your feet in the hanging corner. It is only a thrutch for another two body lengths or so, and then you get that sweet thin hands corner (I seem to remember it taking 0.75 camalots).
The inversion you see in the picture on the page for NFD is unecessary. When I did this route I was just breaking into 11a on gear and had never even heard of inversion moves on OW.
Hope this doesn't hose you.

If you're still looking for partners, I've been hoping to spend more time at the New this year, and am primarily interested in the off-widths. As you know, it can be tough finding partners for that sort of thing. Let me know if you're interested.

-Dave

ANother crack for the list: It's near Rico Suave, and I think it's called 'The Good Old Days'. Short, and looked like it could often be greasy, but I found it pretty sustained, and a nice route.

There's the wide corner next to Crescent Moon at Endless. It's 5.9. Can't remember the name but it's literally 5 feet to the left.

New Yosemite is also at Junkyard, it's wider than some of those mentioned.

jeffinatlanta wrote:New Yosemite is also at Junkyard, it's wider than some of those mentioned.

That route is perfect hands! Not at all what I'd consider wide, and I have small hands.

csproul wrote: That route is perfect hands! Not at all what I'd consider wide, and I have small hands.

I'm an especially small midget.

I'm sure I fell on a #1 Camalot on New Yosemite back when I didn't know how to climb cracks. By definition that makes it a thin hands crack.