Mary Eden Sends One of the World’s Hardest Roof Cracks

In the hushed darkness of a cliffside cave deep in the Utah desert, Mary Eden—also known by her Instagram handle @tradprincess—laced up her climbing shoes. The beam of her headlamp cut through the cool air, illuminating a small circle of the over 150-foot-long fissure winding its way across the ceiling. Seconds later, she hoisted herself into the roof crack and set to work.

Forty minutes later, Eden pulled herself into the bright light of the desert floor above, blood trickling from a gash on her nose. The pain in her right shoulder, which felt extreme just moments before, now dulled to mere background noise in comparison to the feeling of knowing she had successfully completed the third ascent of Black Mamba (5.14b)—one of America’s longest, hardest, and most intimidating roof cracks.

Most people who venture down miles of dusty 4×4 trail to the White Rim, in Canyonlands National Park, notice the dramatic canyon vistas, not the fissured desert floor. But to those in the know, these fissures point to an underground labyrinth of caves and cracks, home to some of the hardest and longest trad lines in the world.

“It’s really the mecca of roof crack climbing,” says Pete Whittaker, who along with Tom Randall is responsible for many of the White Rim’s hardest first ascents, including Black Mamba. “I can’t think of anywhere else in the world with that concentration of roof cracks in one place—and they are all ginormous. The entry-level is a 50-foot roof crack, which is massive itself, but then you have these 100-foot, 200-foot, even 300-foot-long roof cracks.”

Eden’s journey in the White Rim began primarily as a photographer, not a climber. In 2017, she joined Randall and Whittaker to shoot them on the Crucifix, one of their long-term White Rim projects, which remains unclimbed. She didn’t expect to do any climbing on this trip, but she brought her harness and shoes along, just in case. “They ended up having me hop on their new route Bigger Than Your Boyfriend. I struggled to even get on the route, and accidentally kicked Pete in the face… He was very patient about the whole thing,” Eden laughs.

But she was psyched, and Randall and Whittaker saw that, so they went to Eden’s house and built her a crack trainer, promising it would help her work up to the more challenging routes in the Rim that she was dreaming of attempting. “That trainer was horrible,” she remembers. “It was so creaky and scary, with nails poking out of it, and it fell apart while one of my friends was climbing on it. They built me like a death trap crack trainer to get strong on. I don’t know if that was on purpose because of the kick…”

She adds, however, that “it has been really cool to go from taking photos of people I admire to now being very much into climbing those routes myself.”

After a season of training—and another season recovering from surgery for a tendon injury—Eden eventually sent her first major White Rim route, Necronomicon (5.13d/14a), in October 2022.

Just a few hundred feet behind her along the canyon (and one year in front of her) lay Black Mamba. The crack starts with 100 horizontal feet of ropeless crack bouldering, transitions into a final 45 feet of traditional gear-protected climbing, and culminates in a 5.13b offwidth.

It’s an amazing climb, Eden says, involving a wide range of techniques from fingers to wide offwidth and everything in between. “But at the same time… it’s just in a hole,” she says. “You’re in the White Rim, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And you just choose to crawl into a very dark, very dirty cave… filled with spiders.”

It’s possible that this positioning has left Black Mamba with less media attention than other White Rim test pieces. But, as Whittaker notes, the relative obscurity of Black Mamba doesn’t detract from its difficulty. “It really is one of the most difficult roof cracks out there. It’s not only totally on a level with [Century Crack (5.14b) and Millennium Arch (5.14)], but you have to have more of a crack repertoire to be able to climb the route, just because there are so many different sizes on it. It’s not a monumental-pump hand crack… not just the same move for 150 feet. With Black Mamba, you can’t just be a one-trick crack pony.”

“The roof cracks down there are just absolute beasts,” adds Whittaker.

Black Mamba (5.14b), one of such geological beasts, was first climbed by Randall and Whittaker in 2019. “It feels like you’re just going forever into the darkness,” says Randall, recalling his first journey down to the route.

For Eden, the cave’s ceiling looked intimidating and seemingly impossible—but for her, that also meant irresistible. “The first time I saw it, I just thought to myself, no way will I ever do Black Mamba,” says Eden. “It was too long and too varied, and I honestly felt like an impending doom just looking at it. Not for me.”

“But I like doing things that make me feel like they’re impossible.”

For Eden, the most impossible-seeming sequence of this impossible-seeming climb was the final finger crack crux, which comes after more than 100 feet of sustained 5.14 crack climbing. “I was barely able to do it fresh on its own,” she recalls. “I couldn’t imagine having to pull it after starting all the way at the back of the cave.”

Eventually, however, over the course of some four trips down to the route, Eden dialed in each of the finger crack crux sequences and completed fitness burns linking them together. Still, there was a big unknown: the final 30 feet, much of it a formidable size 7 offwidth, and the last move turning the roof’s lip, which  Randall considers one of the route’s hardest single moves.

“Okay, so Black Mamba, it’s a 50-meter route,” Eden told me. “The awkward pod and the three finger cruxes are great. It’s 40 meters of greatness. The Last 10 meters though… is just crap! It’s just a gross off-width. I feel like when I decided to do Black Mamba, I just ignored the offwidth and was like, ‘Oh, all that stuff looks so amazing, 40 meters of perfection!’ [But I was] ignoring what I had to do at the end.”

Her strategy for the off-width, she says, was basically just: “don’t fall out.”

According to plan, after nearly two weeks working on the route, Eden meticulously dispatched 120-feet of low-end 5.14 roof climbing, before diving into the unrehearsed off-width. After making it to the lip, Eden set herself up and was reaching upwards into the final hold when her foot slipped and the darkness suddenly pulled her back down into the cave.

“So my plan,” she chuckled, “it did not work well for me.”

Completing the circle

Eden’s attraction to Black Mamba, however, wasn’t just about the physicality of the climb. She’s captivated by the entire White Rim experience. From stargazing on top of the cave systems while the Milky Way shone vividly above, to camping in exposed caves on the cliff sides, to morning yoga sessions on the sunny canyon rim above the climbs and then descending once again to challenge gravity on the improbable roof cracks—it’s all a beautiful experience, she says. One of the best parts about working a limit climb like Black Mamba out at the White Rim, Eden says, is that “you get to make a life down there in the caves. I had some of my favorite memories of my life there.”

When Eden first laid eyes on Necronomicon several years ago, a herd of six to 10 desert bighorn sheep greeted her by positioning themselves beneath the climb. (Both Black Mamba and Necronomicon, which sit a couple hundred yards apart, are lambing areas for these once-endangered sheep, and both caves are closed to climbing during the lambing seasons.) Years later, on a chilly morning in early November of 2023, she woke up in a cave near Black Mamba and watched a herd of bighorn sheep frolicking under Necronomicon. These sheep had been distant presences for much of Eden’s projecting process on both climbs. Now, however, they were imminently present, chasing each other and butting heads directly in front of her. It felt like an omen. So she put on her shoes, taped up her hands, and walked into the dark cave, ready to complete the final step on that circle started all those years ago at Necronomicon.

After a quick visualization, Eden pulled herself into the crack, towing her rope, while her belayer shuffled a bouldering pad below her. After dispatching the first finger crack crux, she climbed head first, then foot first, then hands first again as she traversed the techy ceiling, keeping tension on the sandy finger cracks above. Pulling the final finger crack crux, she gave a short yell that echoed through the cave: “It’s on Boys!”

A friend handed Eden five massive #7 cams for the looming offwidth and then put her on belay. When she moved on, the ground fell away beneath her.

Eden moved through a series of chicken wings, sideways chimneys, wide poneys, and precarious armbars. At one point she squeezed upwards to the very top of the crack where she could rest for 10 or 15 minutes before going back down and completing the remainder of the offwidth. Before long she reached the final move that had spit her off previously. She dropped her hips out of the crack while applying opposing pressure on the walls at the lip of the offwidth in a physically demanding and precarious armbar sequence. Then she paused, screamed, and thrutched upwards, turning the lip and trading the cold darkness of the cave for the sun-warmed rock of the desert floor above.

Sharing Experiences

For Eden, the joy in climbing lines like these lies not just in sending but in sharing the experience with others and helping to make hard crack climbing (traditionally a sport dominated by men) feel like an option to other female climbers. Introducing other female climbers to the White Rim, and seeing other female climbers now repeating hard routes in the area, has added another layer of fulfillment onto her experience.

“One thing I admire in Eden is seeing her be a role model to younger climbers,” says Randall. “She’s such a good example of perseverance and consistency. Eden brings her own style of energy, enthusiasm, perseverance, and models that for others.”

“I feel like the White Rim has taught me a lot about what I value in rock climbing,” Eden says. “I value the wilderness, I value the people around me, I value hard challenges, I really value pushing myself further than I thought possible. And all these things come together in the White Rim.”

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Izzy journeyed to the White Rim alongside Eden for the duration of her projecting process for the creation of this article, and to direct and produce a feature-length documentary on Mary Eden’s ascent of Black Mamba alongside several other climbs. Follow updates on the films’ release @_Izzy888_ or @SkyRooted on Instagram. Additionally, a short film showcasing Eden’s climb of Necronomicon is currently featured on the SkyRooted Rockclimbing Film Tour. For information about hosting a screening event, reach out to @SkyRooted on Instagram.

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