Battle In The Bubble

On may 15th I had the pleasure of being invited by Kevin Jorgenson and the Spot Bouldering gym to be one of the 20 professional climbers to compete in the Spots first annual Battle In the Bubble competition. It started off with an on-sight qualifier round at the Spot. We had 5 different problems, all set with different climbing styles. The first problem was set on flat wall and was very technical. The second problem was super long and focused a lot on endurance. The third problem tested your problem reading skills and your pinch strength. The fourth problem was how long can you hang with no feet on bad holds. And the last problem was pure strength and lock-off ability. It had a wicked hand foot match move that was super exciting to do and see other climbers perform. Unfortunately, I missed finals by one hold :( ending up in 11th out of 40. Thankfully I was able to fore run the finals routes which were held at the boulder reservoir. They had built two sick!! brand new walls for the competition. I had a blast testing out the finals problems on the new walls and hanging out with other super strong climbers. The Spot gym did a great job with this competition; I hope that they will continue this one for years to come. The way they did finals was really cool and unique. It was elimination style, each finalist tried the problem for three minutes and the top climbers moved on the problem two, and then problem three until only the top two climbers were left. They traded attempts on the final problem until one of them sent or they had tried it three times. Also, which I thought was cool was they had a skydiver parachute down from a helicopter and hand the setters the start hold for one of the problems before they started the competition. Awesome job Spot gym and Kevin Jorgenson at putting together such a great comp!