SummerSweatFest Heading North (True North)!

Last night was the third SummerSweatFest comp, hosted by Andrew McBurney at Boulderz. It was a great night of bouldering with a good crowd (over 65 climbers), great problems, and a little bit of sweat despite the A/C!

If you're not already familiar with this series of comps, SummerSweatFest consists of 7 bouldering competitions at 5 different gyms over the course of the summer. The comps are friendly and fun, so if you haven't been to one before, don't be intimidated by the word "competition".

Here's how it works:

• There are a bunch of bouldering problems set up on the walls, each labeled with a number. Generally the higher the number, the harder the problem (though that's not always strictly true; your mileage may vary!)
• Each problem is worth a certain number of points if you can get to the finish hold (or top out, depending on the problem) without falling. You get fewer points if you get the problem on a second or subsequent attempt
  
• You try as many problems as you can, and keep track of your score
  
• There are 3 divisions: Open for the best climbers, Youth for those under 20, and Recreational for those who aren't that impressed with themselves. Don't be scared off by the thought of competition. If someone like me can "compete", just about anyone can and should. And this is a great way to try out a comp before the slightly more serious Tour de Bloc rolls around in the fall. [Side note: I have challenged Tim Vince to the "Old Guy Cup" over the course of the season. He is ahead so far, but I gained on him last night just by showing up. Winner buys a 6-pack of beer, so it's pretty serious....]
• There is a great prize available for the 6 champions (the male and female winners of 3 age groups: under 15, 15-35 and over 35). Each champion wins a 9-month free pass to all 5 gyms that are hosting competitions in the series.
  

The next comp on the schedule will be held Thursday evening July 22nd at True North Climbing. We'll be setting 15 problems for adults (Recreational and Open categories), and a different 15 problems specifically for Youth climbers. The intent is to make sure that all the young climbers who come out can reach the holds they need to grab on all their problems!

So we're hoping to see a great crowd join us for this comp. You can sign up here!

Update from Atlanta

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.

Youth Comp at Climber's Rock

Yesterday's Elevation Under-20 Youth comp at Climber's Rock was a blast. I spent the morning as a volunteer belayer, wanting to help out and also learn about how these comps work. I had only been at bouldering comps before, so it was great to learn about both how a roped comp works, and to see the kids climb. I had a lot of fun, and am looking forward to having these running in our gym next year.

There were 7 routes to climb in a flash format (which means each competitor only got one chance to climb each route). The score was based on the top 3 climbs, with points awarded for progress from hold to hold on each climb. There were 50 climbers, ranging from the Under-11 (and some were well under 11!) to the 18/19 year olds.

I was belaying on climb D, right in the middle of the range of difficulty. As the comp got started, our climb saw some of the stronger climbers, for whom that climb was a warm-up. Later on we got the kids moving over after doing some of the easier climbs, and at the end we had some of the younger kids giving it a try. The older kids were leading, while the younger ones were on top rope, so they kept me pretty busy switching back & forth between the ropes & belay devices between climbers! It was intense! I felt a little pressure when belaying the lead climbers, because I wanted to make sure I fed slack quickly at every clip so as not to impede the progress of a climber and cause a technical to be called (and a few of them went up really quickly!). I think I did OK. There were lots of falls of course, which is different from my usual lead climbing sessions; two of them were pretty exciting, but no one got hurt at all.

I was very impressed by the calibre of the climbers, and by the spirit of the group. The parents were all well-behaved as well! There were large showings from Climber's Rock and Boulderz (snazzy shirts, Andrew!), and climbers from several other gyms, including at least one who came from Quebec for the comp. James and Maria Richardson did a great job hosting the event, Aaron Eden did a fine job as Head Routesetter, and Tim Vince and Jeff Whattam ran a tight ship as head judges.

We will definitely be joining the party by hosting youth comps once our gym is up and running. Seeing the excitement and talent of all those kids, from the tiny ones to the nearly grown-ups, was really inspiring and fun.

Tour de Bloc coming to True North Climbing!

The Tour de Bloc will be making a stop at True North Climbing this coming season! This is the only national competition series in Canada, and has grown from 8 regional comps in Ontario and Quebec in 2003 to this season's 21 events in 7 provinces.

The new Season Se7en schedule (and no, that's not a typo!) is hot off the press, and has us scheduled on March 27th as the last of the Local comps for the Central (Ontario/Quebec) region. That will be followed by the Regionals at Centre d'escalade Délire in Quebec City on April 10th, and the 2010 MEC Canadian Bouldering Championships at Joe Rockhead's here in Toronto.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Tour de Bloc, these are fantastic events, both to participate in and to watch. Entry is open to anyone, regardless of level of experience. I have "competed" in 5 previous Tour de Bloc comps, in the Recreational category. Each time I show up, complete as many problems as I can, have a lot of fun, and don't care that I rank near the bottom of the pile!

These comps start with open climbing, during which climbers have a few hours to complete as many problems as they can. There are typically 60 bouldering problems spread throughout the gym, in roughly increasing difficulty, with more points awarded for the harder problems. Your final score is the sum of your best 8 problems.

The better climbers compete in the Experienced or Open categories, and the top few finishers in the Open category advance to the finals. The finalists are sequestered in an isolation area while the 4 final problems are set on the walls. Then they are brought out, one at a time, and given 5 minutes to work on each problem. The competitors are streamed through the final problems one after the other, with a 5 minute rest between problems, so that at times there will be 4 climbers at once to watch. Chief Routesetter Jody Miall and his team seem to always find the sweet spot in setting problems just hard enough to separate the top competitors: hard enough they can't all flash them all, but just possible for some of them to succeed. It is always an amazing show. You can get a taste of it from this video clip from the 2009 Men's finals.

Check out the Tour de Bloc site for more information and the complete schedule. I am very pleased and honoured to work with Tour Director Luigi Montilla to bring this first-class event to our facility to help kick things off soon after we open!