123: 2012 Dominion RiverRock Boulder Bash by SportBackers

The second annual Dominion River Rock Boulder Bash began on Thursday with the Dyno qualification round with a total of 12 Dynos. Your top 5 dynos advanced you to the Finals round which was on Sunday afternoon. For the Dyno qualification round each person had two one minutes rounds to attempt their tope five dynos. They took turns alternating between the female and male competitors. Then everyone had 20 minutes for an open session on the wall to go for one more Dyno.

Dyno Wall

Friday kicked off the start of the Bouldering event. Qualifiers consisted of two problems, both of which resulted in a Flash for myself. The first climb was a nice warm up to get you used to steep overhang and the second climb felt more like a route than a boulder problem, which left me rather pumped.

Jimmy Webb Quali #1

The next morning I woke at 7am, grabbed some breakfast then headed off to Peak Experiences Climbing Gym for an athlete meet and greet with their youth climbing team. Sport backers provided some really awesome autograph cards for us to sign for the kids. Once the autograph signing was finished we all headed outside to play some games with the kids. I really had a great time hanging out with everyone from Peak Experiences and hope to be able to do it again next year.

Later that day at 1:30 began the quarterfinals round. The first climb didn’t have any particularly hard moves in it but you definitely had to climb it fast so that you didn’t end up getting too pumped hanging upside down forever. The last move however was rather spicy as you had to match a giant egrips sloper and if you weren’t solid on it you could slip off going for the final jug. The next climb was all power with a toe hook start into a few campus moves that led to a huge double clutch dyno into 2 more technical moves that then brought you to the top. Most everyone except for Daniel Woods got stuck at the dyno move. It was very inspiring to see Daniel crush the move that had shut down everyone prior.

Quarter Final #1

Topping Quarter Final #1

Semi-Finals were held several hours later, which consisted of just one climb. During the preview my initial thoughts were that it was not going to be that hard. Boy was I wrong lol this was without a doubt the hardest climb of the event. I ended up making it about half way through the climb, only a few moves below the high point of people who did not send the climb. Daniel ended up sending the climb, he would have flashed except the jump start dyno gave him some trouble, Vasya made a very impressive flash of the climb as well earning him the top spot going into finals.

Semi Finals

I was actually very happy to be going out rather early for the Finals round, this allowed me to get in a good warm up in, as the warm up wall could get rather crowded with all the competitors on it. The Finals climbed opened with a super fun jump start to a huge jug, a few powerful and technical roof climbing moves got you ready for giant dyno in the middle of the climb. I ended up sticking the dyno on my third attempt, rested a bit on the jug after the dyno and geared up for the last few hard moves. I felt super solid as I neared the finish, however time was not on my side with about five seconds left and 3 more moves to go I just ended up going big for the finish hold. I sadly didn’t snag it and took the huge but fun fall to the pads below. Only Jimmy Webb was able to get higher than me by a hold, putting him in first place and me in second. As you can imagine I was rather excited to end up finishing second place against such a strong field.

Finals Photos