The
past two weekends have been two of the most fun and exciting weekends, well, ever. The first was Dominion Riverrock, which Dalan Faulkner, Danyelle
Faulkner, Josh Levin and I all stayed at Riley Varner's house for. The
competition was one of the best competitions I've ever been to.
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| The Wall! |
The wall,
thanks to Brent Quensenberry, was an amazing thing to look at both for climbers
and non-climbers alike. The route setters did a phenomenal job of setting crowd
pleasing routes that were also fun to climb.
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| Backlight Photography Josh Levin and I waiting to climb Qualifier #1! |
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| Backlight Photography Qualifier #2 |
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| Backlight Photography Qualifier #2 |
I ended up placing sixth after
finals, which I was definitely pleased with (females had a SUCH a hard
category!) but of course I'm hoping next year will go even better! That part of
the comp was Friday and Saturday, on Sunday we had the speed bouldering competition.
This was unlike any other thing I've ever competed in, but was a ton of fun. It
ended up being speed campusing though! This was interesting because it made
people who don’t typically speed climb more interested in competing. I ended up
placing second to Megan Martin!
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| Backlight Photography Speed climbing/campusing! |
Overall
the comp was a great experience and I'm definitely going back next year! Not onl was it a great competition with good friends and competitors, but the festival was super fun too! There were dogs all over the place and tons of things to watch, like BMX, slacklining, and dogs doing long jump into water!
I flew back from Richmond on Monday morning, and I was back at the airport on the next Friday to go back to the east coast, but this time, Boston! Shane Messer had been talking about this huge competition he was organizing ever since Singapore last August. He told me that I should go because it was going to be amazing, and oh, my god, this comp was sick. I decided last minute to go and I'm so psyched that I did. It was a different format than I had ever seen before, we had three routes to do in 3 hours, and it didn't matter when we climbed each one. From there they narrowed down male and female open categories to 9 people for finals. All the finalists walked and stood in front of the huge tarp they had covering the finals routes and, after introducing us, they dropped the tarp and all the athletes previewed.
Our route was super cool, it started on the left side of the wall and traversed over the roof section to the right, the men's route did the opposite (started right and went left). After preview we went back into iso. We were taken out one at a time to go climb! The feeling of climbing alone in front of a huge crowd like there was is really hard to explain, but it's a ton of fun. Of course, Shane's fantastic jokes kept the crowd amused... :) When I climbed the route I made a few dumb mistakes here and there (which I always seem to end up doing..) but I still made it past the roof section to where the climb began traversing left again. I also found a SWEET rest in the middle of the roof with a bomber kneebar!
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| Yeah, we were psyched. |
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| Five Ten represent! |
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| Pugs are the best. |
I flew back from Richmond on Monday morning, and I was back at the airport on the next Friday to go back to the east coast, but this time, Boston! Shane Messer had been talking about this huge competition he was organizing ever since Singapore last August. He told me that I should go because it was going to be amazing, and oh, my god, this comp was sick. I decided last minute to go and I'm so psyched that I did. It was a different format than I had ever seen before, we had three routes to do in 3 hours, and it didn't matter when we climbed each one. From there they narrowed down male and female open categories to 9 people for finals. All the finalists walked and stood in front of the huge tarp they had covering the finals routes and, after introducing us, they dropped the tarp and all the athletes previewed.
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| Photo: Jennie Jariel All the finalists! |
Our route was super cool, it started on the left side of the wall and traversed over the roof section to the right, the men's route did the opposite (started right and went left). After preview we went back into iso. We were taken out one at a time to go climb! The feeling of climbing alone in front of a huge crowd like there was is really hard to explain, but it's a ton of fun. Of course, Shane's fantastic jokes kept the crowd amused... :) When I climbed the route I made a few dumb mistakes here and there (which I always seem to end up doing..) but I still made it past the roof section to where the climb began traversing left again. I also found a SWEET rest in the middle of the roof with a bomber kneebar!
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| Screenshot from the louder than 11 highlights video!! Check it out: http://vimeo.com/67185712 yup, that's the kneebar. So sick. |
I ended up in fourth place behind Sasha
DiGulian, Delaney Miller, and Chelsea Rude. For feeling like I'm not in the
best of rope shape, I'm really happy with how the results turned out! The other
finalists also did an amazing job, with other youth athletes Claire Buhrfeind coming in 5th, Grace
McKeehan in 8th and Katie Lamb in 9th. The female category was once again super
tough, but the men's category was even more stacked. I think this competition was
even more competitive than SCS open nationals was to make finals. Some super
strong guys and girls didn't make finals who definitely could’ve done really
well. Then there's Kai (13 year old bad-ass) who was in first place going into
finals against big names like Daniel Woods, Vasya Vorotnikov, and Jon Cardwell.
He's such an awesome kid, I can't wait to see what else he does! Central rock
gym Hadley put on an amazing event that I hope to compete in next year
again!
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| Another screenshot from the LT11 highlights video! Riley, Dominic, and I all looking psyched for the comp to start. |
The
next day nearly all the competitors went and climbed at the new Central Rock
Gym in Watertown, which was incredible. First of all we had a TON of the
strongest climbers in the country all projecting together and secondly, the gym
was AMAZING. They had incredible bouldering angles, super tall sport routes,
super well set routes and boulders, and even a to-be speed wall! I hope I can
get back there again sometime soon. But for right now, it's time to get psyched
for the Vail bouldering World Cup!!
