Divisionals 2010

This last weekend I competed at the youth divisional championships at Clubsport in Tigard Oregon. The comp was the 4^th major competition I’ve been to at this gym, including two other divisionals and a nationals in 2006. Throughout all these competitions, I had never won difficulty or been old enough to lead at all, so the comp was an entirely new start for me.

One of the things I like most about divisionals is the fact that I get to see my friends from Washington and Oregon, like Alex Fritz, Sam Wolff, and Zan Bode. These guys have been climbing for a long time and we always have a great time and push each other to try to climb harder before we get to nationals.

This year, we drove up to Oregon, which took about 10+ hours so that we could drive down to Smith Rocks and go climbing there after the comp. The night before qualifiers, I went out to Olive Garden with Alex and Zan and then went back to the hotel and somehow ended up with a luggage rack wedged in between our two beds. Probably as a result of playing Jungle Speed in my room with Alex, Zan, Sam, Charlie Andrews, and Eric Sanchez.

Note: If you don’t know, Jungle Speed is the best card game ever invented. If you haven’t heard of it, imagine matching card games combined with spoons and full-body wrestling. It’s intense.

Qualifiers were flash format, which meant all climbers could watch anyone else in their category climb before they went. I went right after Alex, but I preferred not to watch him climb, letting me focus on my own climbing without comparing ourselves. I sent the first climb fairly easily, but fell a couple holds short of the finish on the second climb. This was still enough to put me in first. In speed, I didn’t go quite as fast as I probably could’ve, and ended up in 2^nd place to Alex by 0.1 seconds (I got 10’s on both walls). Charlie and Sam were both right behind us in speed and difficulty, and we all knew it was going to come down to finals.

The next day, I woke up for finals all ready to go. I was going last in my category because I had placed first the day before so I had some time in iso to warm up and get ready. The final route went up the main lead wall on the right (which we had been expecting) and was mostly jugs till it turned the headwall and started a slabby crux on big green huecos. I had no idea what I was doing until I actually climbed. I ended up making it past the jugs and all the huecos to the very last crux on two sharp crimps. Highpoint for both the male A and Junior categories, I was pretty happy about my results.

(all photos: Eric Wang)

By the time it was time for speed climbing, I was getting pretty psyched to climb, especially since I was sitting in 2^nd place behind Alex. I knew I could be faster, but at the same time, I knew he was going to bring it too. The first lap before we switched I hit 7.8 seconds on, which was 3 seconds faster than the day before! Alex was only a little behind, so it all came down to the last lap. He got 9 seconds on it, but I missed the top box, disqualifying me. Dammit. Oh well. Alex deserved the win today. He’s gotten FAST.

Overall, I was pretty psyched on the first win at Clubsport in difficulty, but I also need to work on speed if I want to do well at nationals. It was a great weekend hanging out with everyone and playing Jungle Speed. Time to get training for nationals.

Teva Mountain Games-Vail World Cup

Vail Colorado is the perfect backdrop for the Teva Mountain Games, held every June for athletes all over the world. The games celebrate the outdoor nature of sports such as mountain biking, kayaking, hiking, running, and of course, climbing. Last weekend I attended the event for the first time as I competed in the Bouldering World Cup, held during the Games for the 3^rd time.

I arrived in Colorado after taking an afternoon flight out and got to the town of Vail at around 11pm. The entire place seemed like out of a dream, as the buildings loomed out of the darkness and covered the mountains surrounding with an eerie shadow. The place seemed ready to explode with the building energy. The next morning, I awoke to the sound of the Vail River running outside our hotel and the announcer already exciting the crowd of people watching a whitewater kayaking competition going on in the river below. I tried to get out of bed as fast as I could to see as much as I could before I had to be in isolation at 12:30. I walked over to the climbing area and was able to watch the women’s qualifier session with my friends before the men’s session started, then headed into iso with my friend Alex Johnson.

the crew: (left to right)

me, Alex, Tris, Zan, Tayler, Eric, and Julian

Audrey Gawrych | Chauncenia Cox

Isolation for the World Cup was different than other isolations that I have been in. Instead of the usual group of kids on different teams, there was a very serious group of 50 guys from 20 different countries, speaking different languages and warming up by doing one-arm pullups and v11 add on games. Talk about psyching out the competition… I was able to warm up fairly well with Alex and Ian Dory (another strong kid out of Colorado) and walked out to the wall.

As soon as I turned around to face Problem 1, I knew I was in for a hell of a challenge. The climb started on two sloping holds that you had to mantle to, then dyno out right to a pinch on the arête and finish out some harder moves. It took me almost the entire 5 minutes to stick the dyno and bonus hold a couple moves later. The other problems were even harder, and I progressed less and less far on each one. Hugely demoralizing. ughhhh. The video below shows my best attempt at problem 1. Thanks for the encouragement, mom.

I ended up taking 48^th place, which wasn’t bad, considering I was the youngest male competitor there by far. The next day, I hung out with Alex and Taylor Clarkin from Arizona, and we walked around the entire town checking out the various sponsor booths and events. We saw the semi-finals of the World Cup in the morning and took off from there. Probably the sickest things we saw were the dog jump contest (the dog is jumping to grab a rubber toy) and the BMX freestyle competition. Both were pretty eye-opening.

The finals for the World Cup were that afternoon, and more than 5,000 people turned up to watch the event. Local Daniel Woods was the favorite for the men, followed closely by Jernej Kruder from Slovenia (yes, he does have a Teva hand shaved into his head). The women’s event was a much closer field, but Alex Johnson and Alex Puccio were the favorites from winning the last two years respectively. In the end, Chloe Grafteux won for the women, beating out the Alex’s and Austrian Anna Stohr. Daniel crushed the men’s competition and took home the first World Cup bouldering win for the US ever. REPRESENT.

Paul Robinson | Jernej Kruder

Sierra Blair-Coyle in the semifinals

Akiyo Noguchi

Daniel Woods

The next day I competed in the citizen’s comp, which was had some really cool problems set by the world cup crew. I ended up tying for first place overall by sending a crazy problem going all the way up the 25’ wall with a dyno to a huge bulge, then a hard lockoff move to slopers to a dyno to the finish. Really sick problems overall though. I flew home that afternoon after a long drive back to Denver and lots of studying for finals. eew. Summer is almost here…

Pinnacles 5/31/10

Memorial day is a great day to go climbing. There's no school, relatively good temps usually, and no time constraints. Last memorial day, I went climbing at the Pinnacles with my friend Chris Bellizzi, who put up quite a few routes there in the 80's and 90's.

When we got there, it was pretty crowded with lots of hikers trying to enjoy the 3-day weekend. Our first stop was by the Monolith, where a lot of the good classics are located.

The rock at the Pinnacles is a conglomerate based rock with a lot of little pieces of smooth rock scattered throughout. This gives the climbs a gym like feel where you’re grabbing sometimes golfball-sized holds, sometimes watermelon-sized. The climbs at the monolith climb more or less like that.

My Lizard Friend

I started out the day on a classic of the area, Cantaloupe Death (10b). The last time I climbed this route was when I was 10 years old, and it requires you to lean across a gap to reach the starting holds. I have always been too short to make the span, requiring me to jump all the way across the span. Today, I did the direct start to the route, eliminating the jump and making the route 5.12a.

Cantaloupe Death Direct 12a

photo: Chris Bellizzi

After Chris got on it to warm up, I got on Hot Lava Lucy (12c) after looking it over and pre-equipping the first 2 draws, I went for the onsight. I got all the way past the crux and up to the third bolt, and was about to clip it, when I realized that I left all remaining quickdraws on the ground. DUHH. Oh well. After two more goes I was able to fire it off and continue the day.

First two bolts on Hot Lava Lucy

The rest of the day, we tried the super long Ranger Bolts (13a), which is an 80’ climb on the back of the Monolith. After quite a few attempts to get to the top, I saved it for another try and we hiked back over to the Discovery Wall area to finish off the day. After climbing Cosmos and Chris’s route Verdict, we called it a day and headed back to the car. Good times.

photo: Chris Bellizzi