Here's a guest post from Dustin Curtis. Our Head Routesetter/Instructor is in Atlanta this week, as part of the setting team for the US Youth nationals competition. The comp will be held at Stone Summit, which opened in June and is now the largest climbing gym in the US.
So after, a 6 hour wait at the border, my car torn apart and searched, a missed flight, a newly purchased flight, and 18 1/2 hrs of traveling and one extraordinary public transportation ride through down town, I arrived in Atlanta last night: tired, annoyed and ready to spin wrenches for USA Climbing. I'm slotted here as an intern for Youth Nationals. The setting crew is gathered from all over the country, and one foreigner (me) and we have four grueling days to put together a full Youth Nationals for something like 350 competitors. At least that's what I heard.
The gym is crazy, and tall and intimidating and awesome and metric...yea I don't know how that happened. But today we got up all of the semifinals, the speed routes, (they're called RE-OUTS here by the way, 'cuz RE-OO-TES grow...crazy Americans...) and tomorrow we begin finals and then hopefully we'll be doing qualifiers. It's so cool to be in such a creative, encouraging environment with innovative and imaginative individuals. It's truly a growing experience and I've never been involved in a comp this big before.
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poor Dustin! That sounds like a horrible trip!!! You will do a great job though and they're lucky to have you!
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