Valley offwidth 5.11’s

What are some wide routes harder than twilight zone?

This is a supertopo question. Happy searching.

Some 10a wide cracks harder than Twilight. Such as crack of Despair, Hourglass right and this 8 pithch chimney near main waterfall which end with tirolian Travers. And yes this is Supertopo question for sure ;)

You can also browse a guidebook and look for racks heavy in a good size

Appreciate the input! While using the wayback machine on dead links from ST, looking in a guidebook, wandering the valley with a pair of binoculars, etc might be ways of finding wide cracks— there is also a chance of finding people stoked on similar climbs with a mp post! Will do my homework next time though. 

There a superb looking OW that comes up the climbers right side of the rap route from the Lost Arrow notch. Not sure where it starts  

You could climb up Lost Arrow Chimney. Then rap a ways down the rap route and check it out. Also LA Chimney has some good OW. 

Blind faith,  cream 

tons of shorty mid 11 to 11+ routes. Jaws down underneath the elephant ? Don Reid guide is what may need 

• There is a n OW pitch on In Cold Blood, west face of Sentinel Rock, THE Valley. About pitch 4, first 25-30 feet is the only place I ever used "Leavittation", which people seem to try using on all kinds of OW these days. It's 11a or b or so. Then followed up by about 70 feet of straight forward 5.9ish OW. A bit of an approach.  It's the only OW pitch harder than TZ I have done. Robbins original pin list didn't call for anything bigger than 2" I think. But I had a heads up to bring a #4 Camalot. Also the only time I bumped a cam in front of me. Think the #4 Friend went in there somewhere too. Somewhere low. 

Alexey Zelditch wrote:

Some 10a wide cracks harder than Twilight. Such as crack of Despair, Hourglass right and this 8 pithch chimney near main waterfall which end with tirolian Travers. And yes this is Supertopo question for sure ;)

When you’re doing the Lost Arrow Chimney, remember that Chuck Wilts climbed many of those pitches BITD without wide gear in a pair of tennis shoes.  

Calaveras Domes also has a wealth of 5.11 OW. There a bunch of big arching lines that look hard as ****. 

Hi Aiden—Along with several now-dead supertopo links, I found this list on MP awhile back which has a few 5.11 OW:
https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/108064314/list-of-yosemite-off-widths
I’m not really a 5.11 OW climber (though Alexey once dragged me up Blind Faith) but I’ve aided up the Owl Roof, which is such a cool climb—if you can free 5.12 OW (which your ticks suggest you can) you should get on it!

I haven't done it but EXCALIBUR up on the captain has a slew of hard wide pitches. Hoping to do this route someday myself.

Oooh oooh me me pick me

Well, let’s see… 

First of all, Cream (.11a) is soft. Like really soft. I downgraded it to .10b but I was scoffed by friends so gave it a courtesy of.10c. I could have stopped and had lunch in that thing. 10.96 is harder.

Owl Roof (.12c) way hard. There’s an O.W. to the left around the corner I thought was hard too. 10+\11a.

Final Exam (.10d) Up at the base of Half Dome. Total sandbag, so I include it.

The O.W. that exits the Lost Arrow Notch is only .10+. A lot of loose stuff and grovely, some sketchy stuff. Totally worth a burn. Not as cool as rapping out of the notch though… so…

Gold Rush (.11b) Burly. Wide thing everyone gawks at when leaving the Valley on 120.

Realm of the Lizard King (.11c) Lost Brother area.

The Oddyssey (.11a) Washington’s Column. The whole thing is a death trap, but the pitch off Brunch Ledge is slammin’. Bring some antacids and a lawn chair for your belayer. Oh, and safety glasses.

Power Failure (.11a) Washingtons again. Its not so much a route as it is a goal. Plan for most of a day and bring beer.

Basket Case (.11b) Epic. Exit left. Bring Bactine, gauze and tape. Full Value!

Fist Puppet (.11a)  Dog Dik Cliff. I don’t even remember this one. Notes say Offwidthy!

Power Point (.11a) Higher Cathedral. Good!

The Affliction (.11a) High Cath… Haven’t done.

Plumb Line (.10e+) Elephants. The E is because it’s one past D. This one goes to eleven. Trust me, it’s 5.11 enough.

Trix (.11a) Cascade. Seem to remember it being wide.

Tidbit (.11a) Lower Cathedral. Just a bit wider than fists I think.

Local Motion (.11?) Widows Tears. Haven’t Done, but hear it’s worth the shenanigans.

There’s a big O.W. on Broderick I spied years ago that looked brutal. Several pitches. Could be wrong.

Honestly, there’s not a lot of .11 offwidths in the valley. But there are a ton of .10d’s which would be .11 anywhere else, so there’s that. 

Rob Dillon wrote:

Oooh oooh me me pick me

Uh oh, I advertised my goal on the proj... you know what that means... time to put up !!

Haha... nice list Salamanizer. Plumb Line looks awesome, gotta do it!

The above excellent list covers a broad spectrum.

Tidbit (if the same as Tiblet and the more common 2nd pitch of beggar buttress?) is a well protected 11a fingers to fun well protected fist/ow.

On the opposite end of that spectrum is The Affliction - a Cosgrove 11d R that may or may not have ever been repeated (the story of the FA is simultaneously inspiring and bone chilling). Has anyone here ever done the Affliction? The whole kicking loose a 60’ school bus sized pillar on the FA makes it clear to me Cosgrove played an entirely different sport than most of us.

Only done the first 4 of Beggars Buttress but a pitch on the upper half (11b ow/squeeze) probably makes your list. 

Tony Lobay wrote:

The above excellent list covers a broad spectrum.

Tidbit (if the same as Tiblet and the more common 2nd pitch of beggar buttress?) is a well protected 11a fingers to fun well protected fist/ow.

On the opposite end of that spectrum is The Affliction - a Cosgrove 11d R that may or may not have ever been repeated (the story of the FA is simultaneously inspiring and bone chilling). Has anyone here ever done the Affliction? The whole kicking loose a 60’ school bus sized pillar on the FA makes it clear to me Cosgrove played an entirely different sport than most of us.

Only done the first 4 of Beggars Buttress but a pitch on the upper half (11b ow/squeeze) probably makes your list. 

I’ve never heard it called Tiblet. What’s a Tiblet lol! Sounds like a spelling error to me. It’s been Tidbit ever since I remember.
I've done Beggars Buttress twice. It doesn’t rank high on my list of memorable Valley routes. It’s good, worth repeating apparently. I think it’s kinda soft and well protected is why it gets all the hype. But there’s a lot of junk up there, and the decent is terrible. There is no .11 squeeze up there either. The only wide I recall is pretty easy and short. That bulge/roof thing at the top will catch you off guard if you’re not ready for it.

I’ve done most of the stuff on that list. Haven’t done the Affliction, Lizard King or Local Motion. I have done the Owl Roof. Didn’t get it. That upside down feet first Vedauwoo style climbing was never my jam. There isn’t much of that kind of stuff in the Valley, which is why there really isn’t that much hard offwidth there. That isn’t to paint lightly what is there either. Valley offwidth kinda has its own form of brutality to it.

I spent a good 10 years aggressively climbing everything wide I could find. I still rarely pass one up. I don’t know what drew me to them. Aesthetics and all that maybe, but I think it’s more than that. It’s not enough for me to go places others simply don’t. I need to go places others simply won’t. And Offwidths are one of those kinda forms of climbing people tend to avoid. Like slabs for example. Which is probably why I spent a good decade climbing everything slab too. Like Tom Higgins told me, “you’re a beta min climber”. The unknown and less traveled is the draw. Most people aren’t like that, and that’s a good thing. 

Here's the OW list from the older Meyers & Reid:

Not much there, and the list seems to have been omitted from my 1994 edition. The obvious choices would be the OW pitches on Freestone and Astroman but I'm not sure either are more difficult than Twilight.

Ben Kraft wrote:

Here's the OW list from the older Meyers & Reid:

Not much there, and the list seems to have been omitted from my 1994 edition. The obvious choices would be the OW pitches on Freestone and Astroman but I'm not sure either are more difficult than Twilight.

I’ve done almost all of those lol. Never noticed that list in the book. 

Ben Kraft wrote:

The obvious choices would be the OW pitches on Freestone and Astroman 

If we talk about an OW pitch on a long multipitch climb, I have always been curious about the Monster Offwidth on Freerider/Golden Gate. My impression is it goes from narrow to wide bottom to top. I always thought bombay OW is insecure and hard, but it's hard to fall out of an OW that keeps opening up. #6/#7 should be relatively comfortable for most people as that's a size eveyone can get their entire leg inside. Many different resting positions depending on one's size can come out of it. However, every video I watched made that pitch sound like a gruesome fight. What makes it so hard?

Mei pronounced as May wrote:

What makes it so hard?

It’s just long, and an OW, which many people aren’t well versed in.

I bet if one were to take a poll of the least desirable form of climbing, offwidths would be near the top, if not squarely on top. And if one were to take a statistic from known ascents, I bet even much more prominently rooted on the summit than most realize or would like to admit.
Most people’s experience in the wide is more a product of needing to get through a wide section in order to get up a route rather than specifically seeking it out for that reason.