Chalk Dust

I had an absolutely fabulous time at this comp!   It was an all-female comp, from conception to competing.  And the ladies certainly came out and competed.  The final tally was I heard was 156 competitors.  Wow!  What an amazing show of support for the event.

The problems were fun and varied.  At first I thought they were skewing toward crimpy, but it turned out that I just happened to try several crimpy ones at the beginning.  I would have liked to see more variation in the open level problems, as they were mostly of the over-hanging style.

This gym lent itself well to hosting a big competition.  There was tons of wall space and lots of room to move around.  It would have been nice to have sections marked off and judges running each section, to reduce congestion.  It was hard to get on the wall sometimes, particularly by the more popular problems.  There were also some issues with people not checking to see if the problem they were about to attempt interfered with anyone else on the wall.

Finals were amazing to watch.  There were 2 boulder problems and 1 lead route.  There was plenty of room for spectators.  It seemed like everyone in the house had a good seat with a view of all three problems.

 
Problem #1 was sent by all 6 finalists, with 4 of them flashing!  The red, heart-shaped holds were not lost on the spectators.

Problem #2 stymied everyone, with no sends and varying high points.  Congrats to Angie for making the most of this stumper!

 
The lead route was loooooong, especially after a 3.5 hour redpoint and two hard boulders in finals.  Sasha and Delaney finished it!

 
Sasha, Delaney, and Angie making the Heist podium!

I did fairly well.  My injuries were nagging, but did not hold me back too much.  Although my ankle issues were exacerbated when I rolled the bad one dodging out of the way of spectators during one of my top-outs.  (Dear spectators:  We love the support and cheering, but we need some room, especially on top-outs.  You may feel you have given us enough room, but frankly our focus is on getting the send and you never really know what direction we’re going to go.  I tend to flop about like an octopus out of water on top-outs:/ )  Here are some pics of me on Problem #59 working the dyno!  At the end, I squeaked in one last send.  I was just hanging onto Problem #3 (super balancey) when they announced that you should finish whatever climb you were currently on.  I managed not to fall off when I heard this although hearing that is always stressful.  I linked the rest of the beta together (finally) and got the send.  What a way to end!

I might have done better if I had done a little less socializing.  There were a bunch of problems I completely missed, including most of the ones in my category.  I’m a little bummed I didn’t get to try them, but I had such a great time hanging out that I’m okay with it.  Although I should probably buckle down at future comps.  We’ll see.  Climbers are so much fun to talk to!

Sweet prize packs for citizens!

See full results from comp here.