Bouldering Competition, or Bouldering "Festival"?

We have another bouldering event coming up next Thursday, our second SummerSweatFest event of the season. We've been calling these events "competitions", and indeed there is a competitive element to them for some people. Each participant keeps score, and there are awards for the top finishers in each category.

The down side of using the word "competition" is that it seems to keep some people from participating, because they think they aren't good enough. That's nonsense. I'm participating, and I'm really not very good. Really, I'm not. Ask any of my staff! But I "compete" because it's fun, and so see whether I can improve from event to event.

So this time I'm going to call next Thursday's event a "Bouldering Festival" instead. Yes, there will still be a scorecard for each participant to keep track of how they're doing. But think of it like a mini-golf scorecard. You keep score, but you don't have to take it very seriously if you don't want to.

We kept the problems from our last event up on the walls for a few weeks, to give everyone a chance to try them out (they're being taken down this week as we move ahead on our routesetting). Hopefully some of you took the opportunity to try out the problems to see how many you could do. If you were able to get at least a handful of them, it's worth coming out to next Thursday evening's SummerSweatFest Bouldering Festival, for 3 hours of bouldering fun with a great bunch of people. We had 79 competitors - er, participants - at our last SummerSweatFest in July, and hope to grow that number this time around. There will be some raffle prizes again, so no matter how you do at the problems, there's a chance to go home with a prize!

So come join us Thursday August 19th!