This year I had the opportunity of competing in a bouldering comp unlike anything else done before. The magnificent wall was built and designed by Brent Quesenberry, whom did a great job of really creating the ultimate viewer experience for someone who has never seen a bouldering competition, along with making it super fun to climb on.
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The wall
As you can see it is just a metal structure with huge volumes hanging down that we climbed between to seek the prize of topping the huge 30 beast out. Qualifiers, I really was just getting used to the wall as I sent problem #1 but not as smoothly as I would have liked due to the different style of climbing. Qualifier #2 was pretty tough and I was pretty pumped from problem #1 as we only had 5 minutes per problem. I made it far enough though to qualify me to semi-finals. Technically, this was a boulder competition but felt more like a route competition as each problem had 20+ moves. This led to exciting, showy big move climbing. Semi-Finals
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Semi-Finals
Photo - Travis Wills |
I was prepped and ready to crush. Qualifiers were over and I had a good feel of the wall. Our semi-finals route was one of the coolest problems I have been on. It had cool movement to a strong one arm lock off move to some shoulder moves on pinches,
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Shoulder Moves |
Photo - Travis Willswhich then led to my favorite move of the comp "Bat-hang"!!!! and then a huge two handed dyno to finishing pinches.
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Psyched before the Bat-Hang |
Photo - Travis Wills
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Bat-Hang |
Photo - Travis Wills
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Coming out of the Bat-Hang |
Photo - Travis Wills During route preview I immediately scoped the bat-hang out and could not wait to do it. Oddly enough I was the only person to do the move the quote un quote proper way haha. Go figure. I was the first of two to send the problem, Zach Lerner being the 2nd.
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Dyno! |
Photo - Travis Wills
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Looking at the Crowd |
Photo - Travis Wills
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Victory!!! |
Photo - Travis WillsFinals Finals were supposed to follow semi-finals later on that night, however we were forced to delay them till the next day due to a sudden thunder storm that brought everything to a halt. Only one problem lay in front of me on finals day. During preview time I knew that I could send all I had to do was get past this one dyno move right near the end in which one could easily fly off the hold. I easily made my way to the move through some solid feet first climbing action. To my dismay I did not stick the sideways dyno first go, with only 5 minutes per climb I rested for a few seconds before hopping on again to give it my final burn. Again I easily cruised to the move seconds before I was about to go for the move my feet cut which was actually better because it was better for me because I found out that I could just campus the dyno. After sticking the campus I climbed up on the last move, looking at the last move which was a doozy I simply had no more gas left. In the end I tied for 3rd but ended up taking 5th place due to falls. All in all I had an amazing time at the competition and cannot wait till next year in which I know will be even better!! |
Highlight Video
Nice job. That wall is intriguing. Maybe they should double it up.
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