Nationals

Last weekend was the annual Canadian National Bouldering Championships, the culmination of a fantastic Tour de Bloc season. Joe Rockheads was the host gym, and they put on a fine (if somewhat hot) show. True North Climbing was well-represented, with 4 of our routesetters competing in the Open category, one of us judging, and some of our members also competing.

I took the judging course Friday night, to learn both how to judge bouldering problems, and what is involved in being the Jury President (aka Head Judge) for a competition. We plan to have a bunch of comps at our gym, and at some point I figure I should be prepared to be the head judge, so this was a start in that direction. (At our inaugural Tour de Bloc comp on march 27th I had the role of "host", which was a lot of fun, and required little training!).

Saturday was the qualifying round for the Open competitors. 15 women and 45 men each did 5 boulder problems in iso format, with 5 minutes to work on each problem and 5 minutes to rest in between. I was the judge on problem #2, which for the women featured a fun dyno opening move, and a nice balancing finish, with both hands high on the wall in a taped box with no handhold.

Sunday morning and early afternoon was the "citizen's comp": Youth, Recretional and Experienced categories in a scramble format, choosing among 50 problems (including the 10 qualifiers from Saturday) to get their best 6 scores. Sunday at 5pm the finals began, with the top 10 men and women (actually 11 men due to a tie for 10th place) again working their way through 5 problems each. It was very hot in the gym, and perhaps in part because of that, the men's problems were very tough on the finalists.

Our Head Instructor/Routesetter Dustin Curtis was 7th after qualifiers, and finished 10th on Sunday, earning him another berth on the Canadian team. Dustin will be heading to Vail, Colorado in June for the World Cup event as part of the Teva Mountain Games. Stephen Tambling just missed the cutoff for finals, finishing 12th in Men's Open. Dustin Kerr and Shaun Hunter rounded out the TNCI team, with DK having a spectacular fall on men's problem #3 on Saturday (extra padding went up right after that!).

Watching the comp as a judge was a very different perspective. I got to see all the climbers, but pretty much only on one problem each, each day. I got a great view up close, but had to keep my mouth shut instead of cheering them on. It was a good learning experience, and it's good to have more people trained to do this, to support the sport as it grows.