Wednesday, May 18, 2011

1st Ever Dominion River Rock Bouldering Bash!!


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.


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 

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, 
Shoulder Moves
Photo - Travis Wills
which then led to my favorite move of the comp "Bat-hang"!!!! and then a huge two handed dyno to finishing pinches. 
Psyched before the Bat-Hang
Photo - Travis Wills
Bat-Hang
Photo - Travis Wills
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.  
Dyno!
Photo - Travis Wills
Looking at the Crowd
Photo - Travis Wills
Victory!!!
Photo - Travis Wills
Finals
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

1 comment:

  1. Nice job. That wall is intriguing. Maybe they should double it up.

    ReplyDelete