Wrap Up Of Atlanta Trip

[Dustin Curtis, our Purveyor of Destiny - that is, Head Routesetter and Head Instructor - concludes his coverage of his visit to Atlanta, during which he was part of the setting crew for the US Youth Nationals Championship]

Day 3

We began on Qualifiers #2 today. For those of you not familiar with the format and categories, let me explain. Youth categories are as follows:

• D (11 years and under)
• C (12 and 13 years old)
• B (14 and 15 years old)
• A (16 and 17 years old)
• and finally Junior (18 and 19 years old)

These are each split into Male and Female. Each category will climb two qualifying routes, one on each day, that will hopefully separate the number of competitors enough to take only the top 16 to semi-finals. The competitors then will climb a semi-final route on the third day of the comp, which will hopefully separate the field enough to take only the top ten to finals, which happens on the last day of the comp. The problem with Qualifier 2s, or Q2s, is that they have to be tweaked down from a Q2 to the age category above's Q1. Doesn't sound that bad right? The trick with youth climbing, other than them not climbing like adults and being short and having a smaller hand size, is that C category and under don't lead. I don't know if anybody has looked at pictures of the gym (see http://stonesummitclimbing.com/) but nothing on that main wall screams top rope to me. When you lower off the anchors anywhere along that wall, you're easily 25 ft away from the base of the wall, and in some places, more.

So we continue the process of setting, fore running and tweaking to get these routes perfect for the kids. When we all had breakfast this morning there were definite signs of being worked. The rigging, the ascending and fore running, even hauling holds back and forth starts to wear on you.


Day 4

This is last day of setting before the comp. Everything has to be comp ready by the end of today and we'll stay as late as we need to to make that happen. We started with tweaking down the Q2s to Q1s. Yesterday I had set Female C Q2 (5.12d by the way! Damn these kids are strong!) and now I'm tweaking it down to the Female B Q1 which should go at 5.11d. In other words, the harder qualifier for the 12/13 year old girls gets modified to become the easier qualifier for the 14/15 year old girls. This is more efficient than setting completely different routes, both during the initial setting, and during the switchover between qualifying rounds. Again the other difference between those two categories other than their height, is that Female B doesn't top rope. Clipping positions need to be safe, all the draws that aren't being used in the route need to come off and the rope drag needs to minimized. After all is said and done, the route should be safe - safety is always the first priority - it should build (get harder as you get higher,) and it should look PIMP! The idea of it looking "pimp" is that it should look "TV worthy." I've got to say I'm not a fan of colour coding setting but when there's only one route up on the wall, it's all the same colour and style of holds, the starting hold, finishing hold, and placards are all perfectly boxed in the same colour of tape and all the draws are taken off except the ones you clip, the route looks AMAZING. It's the little things that make a comp spectacular, not just amazing routes (those are key). but if everything else looks like it was rushed and put together, it takes away from the true 'pimpness' of those routes.