Battle in the Bubble Day 1

I went to the spot tonight to compete in the qualifier for the Battle in the Bubble. The comp tonight was pretty low key. I was expecting the place to be jam packed with people like every Spot comp seems to be. It was still a good turnout and the problems were great. I took it a little easy tonight and still ended up in 9th place. So tomorrow I will be heading back up to compete in the semis. I hope to get some pictures and video of the event.

DBC Comp Write Up

Last weekend I competed in the first summer comp at the DBC. First things first, quite a few people showed up for the comp, which created a good atmosphere of wanting to pull down. The setting on the first two open problems was great. I only climbed on a few of the other category problems but the ones I got on were fun and were spaced well across the gym. I also heard finals was awesome and had a great vibe to go with it.

I had some major problems with the comp though. All the open problems except one open were on the back wall with a couple venturing onto the arete on the far side of the steep wall. The problems should have been put up all over the gym. Why waste tons of valuable and great sections of the gym. For me the majority of the Open problems represented a very elitist style of setting that was poorly set. Lets make problems hard by having no feet and making giant moves on a steep wall. Any lazy setter can do this, and it is wrong to do for a comp. Just because you are good at this type of climbing, does not mean you need to set it for the majority of the climbs. Problems had one or no feet to do moves. The moves off these feet were giant jumps to open hand holds. Multiple problems had the same types of moves;right hand on an undercling and cross to the headwall, right heel hook cross to a sloper, giant move out left off no feet. Comps need variety on the climbs. It is one thing to set this type of problem outside of a comp. When you are charging people to climb these types of problems it is a whole other story. This type of setting shows why people get paid to set. It takes a true professional to step outside of his or her comfort zone and create multiple problems that are different, unique and encompass all abilities.

If I was to rate this comp on a scale of 1-10. I would give it a 3.

Maybe I am just getting really bad at climbing and need to realize that this will not change and I need to adapt to it or move on.

If you feel I am wrong or have overlooked something let me know, I would be happy to discuss it and see different view points on the matter.

This weekend is the Battle in the Bubble at the Spot. I have ben training really hard for this comp and hope to get to at least semi-finals. I hope to get some pictures and have a short write up about it to post on here.

Deer Creek Canyon

Today I headed out to Deer Creek Canyon with Matt and Danny. Matt the other day found a new project he wanted to free solo. He described it as a highball boulder problem, but it actually could be bolted and is taller than some of the routes there. We loaded up the car with 8 crash pads and were off. Matt threw a top rope down on the route. We quickly realized this line was harder than it looks. After some cleaning and figuring out beta, Matt sent on TR. I cam close but the top moves spit me off. Matt decided to throw a few free solo burns on it to the lip. Watching him jump off from there was like waiting for a train wreck to happen. If he decides to go through with the free solo, a lot more pads will be needed. I will post some pictures from the day soon.