How the Trad Princess Became the Crack Queen

Nearly two decades ago, when Mary Eden moved into a new place in Moab with her sister Lindsay, they found a giant hole in the wall. Instead of patching it up, Lindsay bought a big canvas and said, “Paint this.” While Eden had been making art since she was a little girl, she wasn’t yet a painter. So her sister suggested they fill the canvas together.

The sisters dreamed up a fairytale scene, complete with a castle and a path through the woods. This quickly spiraled into a competitive paint-off, wherein they would cover each other’s contributions “over and over and over again,” according to Eden, who is known to many by her Instagram handle @tradprincess. Finally, an entire year later, Eden’s painting “dominated” and they dubbed the artwork complete.

The incident stands testament to Eden’s creativity and persistence—skills that translate well to the world of offwidth climbing, Eden’s current niche. In 2022, she made the first female ascent (FFA) of Necronomicon (5.14a/5.13d) in the White Rim of Canyonlands. A year later, she sent an even harder White Rim roof crack: Black Mamba (5.14b). And just over a fortnight ago, on November 9, she became the first woman to send Century Crack (5.14b), the world’s hardest natural offwidth.

Wired for wide

Growing up in rural Kentucky, Eden learned early about working hard and running free. As she recently described in her Alpinist cover story, she whiled away her leisure time riding horses and playing with her large Barbie collection. (Open request to Mattel: Please make a special edition crack climber Barbie modeled on Eden, with giant accessory cams.)

“My family is full of really hard workers,” Eden says. “If they didn’t work hard, there wouldn’t be money to pay the electric bill. So I learned that you have to work really hard and survive. I grew up with that mentality.” A strong work ethic like Eden’s is non-negotiable for hard offwidths like Century Crack. Aside from the extensive time projecting the route this fall, she also spent many months laboring away in a handmade roof crack trainer in her garage.

Another key quality for wide climbing is pain tolerance. Eden explains that since she has a pretty health body, “it’s easy to torture it a bit.” In doing so, she often ends up ignoring pain receptors to push through: “I’ve had to learn over the years to actually pay attention to that because I’ve hurt myself that way.”

For example, Eden refused to succumb to sharp pain in her wrist on the Yosemite route Mark of the Beast (5.13b). The post-climb prognosis? A traumatic tendon injury that eventually required surgery. She’s since learned not to ignore the pain—and to “back off” when needed.

A recent incident at one of her Indian Creek crack camps further reinforced Eden’s supreme ability to power through pain. After contracting food poisoning from a quesadilla severe enough to make another climber bail for the day, Eden popped five Pepto Chewables and carried on, leading routes and dispatching jam guidance without complaint.

But Eden’s real secret to suffering through burly cracks might be her strong sense of humor. In the space of a 90-minute interview, Eden worked in funny stories and gutter humor wherever possible, often cracking herself up. Then there’s her reputation as a meme queen, who excels at satirizing the struggles of crack climbing—and encouraging others to do the same.

One story Eden shared was the time she accidentally peed on her friends’ project in the White Rim. “There was a moment where I was so deliriously tired from Black Mamba that I walked over, fell asleep on top of their project, then woke up and peed into the crack,” she recounts. She didn’t realize that her pee would actually drip into the route, to her friends’ horror.

Eden also laughs about the painting she made of a butt shot—an amateur photograph taken below a climber that overly accentuates their backside—that she took of a random guy named Tim on Coyne Crack (5.11d) in Indian Creek. “If you ever see this,” she said, putting out an open message to Butt Shot Tim, “I don’t even remember what you look like, but I know what your butt shot looks like. It’s amazing.” The painting has been hanging on the walls of her Moab home for years. “Some of my early climbing art is butt shots on classic routes,” she adds.

Could humor be as endemic to offwidths as it is to the gallows? After all, the Wide Boyz, the pioneers of modern offwidth climbing, are no strangers to wit and pranks.

Wide Boyz protégé

Jokes aren’t the only thing Eden shares with Randall and Whittaker. She often credits the British offwidth duo for launching her beyond the realm of 5.11 and into the world of wide.

Originally, Eden hated wide climbing. “The only difference between climbing heaven and climbing hell is climbing hell has offwidths,” Eden says of her former mindset. More of a finger crack gal, she even tried to bail on a Vedauwoo, Wyoming trip because she was not enjoying “thrashing around blindly” in fear.

But after Randall and Whittaker crashed at her house, she started adopting some of their training techniques, as well as their approach to projecting. Before they came along, Eden still followed the “onsight or die” mentality of the crusty mentors she’d come up with in the desert.

“I feel like I would have eventually gotten to where I am now as a climber,” Eden says of, in particular, Randall’s influence, “but it would have taken me a lot longer. Tom expedited my journey.”

In exchange for Randall’s casual mentorship and training spreadsheets, Eden says she low-key mothered him. She’d help him remember to pack things (e.g., water) for climbing, for example, since he tended toward forgetfulness. Her instinct to mother those around her perhaps stems from the years she spent helping her sister raise her nieces. But it also demonstrates that Eden’s social prowess extends far beyond platforms like Instagram that have, in part, brought her into renown.

Making climbing communal

From her insistence that her mentorship with Randall be reciprocal, to her three-day crack camps that she holds in spring and fall, it’s clear that Eden is not interested in leaning into the selfish side of the sport. While she acknowledges that climbing is inherently individualistic, she argues that it’s also often communal.

“It’s a partnership with somebody for a season,” Eden says. “Showing up on volunteer days. Mentoring people as much as you can. Passing down knowledge or history. It is selfish, but I don’t know very many climbers that do it for life who are islands.”

As climbers age—and after “the initial excitement of pulling really hard wanes”—Eden argues that we often become more connected to our local communities. As she migrated from mentee to mentor, Eden also became more focused on the “we” over the “me.” She’s particularly motivated to squash the historically negative vibes of the offwidth community.

This season, Eden has her own protégés and potential inductees into the 5.14 roof crack club. While she approached Necronomicon and Black Mamba as personal projects, Eden decided to ask her friend Sam MacIlwaine, a fellow 5.13 offwidth climber (and editor at Climbing) that Eden has mentored for five years, to try for Century with her. MacIlwaine accepted the challenge without hesitation; soon after, she moved in with Eden so they could train night and day.

It wasn’t long after Eden and MacIlwaine began spending grueling hours in the crack trainer that Eden’s fiancé Samuel Foreman, also a 5.13 offwidth climber, committed to training as well. So Foreman joined the Fall 2025 Century crew and began spending hours upside-down in the garage, often screaming in pain.

While Eden sent the project a few weeks ago, she is now focused on empowering the two Sams to do the same. She wants to make sure the “Samwich,” as she refers to her two project partners, feel supported to meet the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of such a sufferfest of a route. And the mother in her is already thinking two steps ahead—how will their triad of a team adapt to life post-Century? Eden describes the questions plaguing her. “How are you going to deal if this training plan doesn’t work? How are we not going to get a PPD (post project depression)?”

Life post-Century 

Contrary to what Eden’s recent achievements and latest success suggest, offwidths don’t run her life. Yes, she wants to send every roof crack in the White Rim in the next decade. And for sure, she plans to tick off the top 10 5.14 trad routes on her list—most of which are in the White Rim.

But she also wants to focus on instruction and climbing clinics. Recently, Eden had a mega gratifying experience, wherein a climber who took one of her crack camps years ago put both of her “soft projects” on toprope for her. (She explains that “soft projects” aren’t projects with soft grades, but projects she’s not yet emotionally committed to sending). “It was a life goal for me,” Eden says of this full-circle moment. “I’ve been waiting for years, and it finally happened. I was sitting there eating my Goldfish like, ‘I’ve made it.’”

Cracks aside, Eden still loves all styles of climbing. Last winter, she traveled to Egypt with Foreman and Brittany Goris to meet her friend, Spanish climber Talo Martin who, according to Eden, can send 5.12- slab in approach shoes with one hand. The goal? Help the nascent climbing community develop slab routes, where Martin sees endless potential. In addition to bolting some moderate slab routes, Eden also established one invert offwidth for good measure—and at the request of some Egyptians.

Post-Century, one more focus of Eden’s will remain her art. Her acrylic canvases line the walls of her home on Moab’s outskirts. In a light-filled room toward the back of her house, she’s set up a little studio so she can paint any time, even if she only has 10 minutes to spare. Despite the affordability challenges of a highly touristic town day, she hopes to one day buy a house in the area. “Moab is my home,” Eden says. “The red dust gets in your soul, and my soul is definitely here.”

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