This week you get a topic of interest. Unless we haven't had any interaction in the past 8ish years, you probably know that I kind of like rock climbing. The first time I climbed was at a birthday party. I don't remember the party very well but I do remember I had a blast! Some time later my family joined an athletic club that had a climbing wall and I was hooked. I got "recruited" to join the club's newly formed climbing team and competed with them for 3 years. But how does a climbing competition work? I get asked this a lot and in honor of the SCS Nationals competition today, here it is:
Let's break it down. There are two main types of climbing competitions, bouldering and sport climbing. Bouldering is climbing without ropes, staying fairly low to the ground whereas sport climbing is using ropes and going up much higher. Generally, bouldering tends to be more strength and power based (not me) whereas sport climbing is more about endurance and balance (more me).
For USA Climbing competitions, climbers compete in a number of local competitions followed by regionals, divisionals, and nationals. Most of these local competitions are three hours long. Climbers walk around the climbing gym, pick a route to do, and try to get from the floor to the top without falling. If a climber can do that, you earn the points for the route. The harder the route, the more points it's worth. If you're unfamiliar with routes but you've been to a climbing gym, all those colorful tape marks on the wall show you the route path. A climber can only use the rocks that have the route's tape color. Use anything else and it's considered "cheating" and counts as if they fell. At the end of the 3 hours, a climber's top 5 completed routes make up their score for the competition. The local competitions are typically pretty laid back.
For regionals, divisionals, and nationals, the competitions are a bit more intense. Climbers are assigned a certain set of routes they must try. Instead of having to get to the top without falling, for every rock (aka hold) a climber grabs, they get points. The higher they get, the more points they earn. These routes are designed to be incredibly hard and it's not uncommon for only one or two people to actually reach the top. In general, when climbers get to the gym, they are taken into an area called isolation (or "iso" if you want to use the lingo). In iso, climbers cannot see anything else in the gym. One at a time per age/gender group, a climber goes out to the main climbing area and sits in a chair facing the audience with their back to the climbing wall (this way the climber can't get any tips about how to climb the route from watching someone else). This can be pretty stressful since you can hear the audience reacting to how the climber before you is doing but you're not allowed to watch. When the timer begins, the climber turns around and attempts the route. For sport climbing, the climber gets one go per route. Bouldering tends to allow as many attempts as wanted within the time limit.
That's the basic outline of how climbing competitions work. For sport climbing, there are speed competitions as well. These are pretty self-explanatory. Whoever makes it up the wall the fastest is the winner.
I caught a ride up to Horsetooth last week and got do some bouldering at the reservoir. I have been seriously slacking on my training and am definitely out of climbing shape but it's fun to mess around on the easier climbs and relax. It's a bit hard to take pictures of yourself climbing so I've thrown in some of my favorites from the past.
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| Horsetooth Reservoir, Colorado 2012 |
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| Horsetooth Reservoir, Colorado 2012 |
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| Divisionals at ClubSport, Oregon 2010 |
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| Smith Rock, Oregon 2012 |
1) Vlad put up his video of us talking about our spring break trip. It's pretty entertaining if I do say so myself so go ahead and give it a watch.
2) I helped create the "travel" part of a website for my digital marketing class. We'll be updating it with new things each week so you should take a gander.
3) If anyone has anything they want me to write about, let me know and I'll more than likely do it. Suggestions are welcome!
That's all for now. Bye.
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