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| CCS Regionals photo cred: Sunny Side Productions |
My first comp of the month was CCS Regionals, held at Miramont in Fort Collins. This was surely one of the more interesting comps I have been to, as halfway through the qualification round, a city blackout caused the whole gym to go dark for 3 hours. As you can imagine, this made climbing very difficult. Due to the delay, however, I was unable to make finals. This was the first time I really saw the enthusiasm for collegiate climbing. Colorado is full of large and motivated climbing teams and it taught me a thing or two about how to do the same at Mines.
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| ORC Bouldering Comp - photo cred: Jonathan Barolak |
The next weekend it was time for the Mines Spring Bouldering comp. I really enjoy these nice friendly competitions where I can just climb with my classmates and have a good time. It's really amazing how strong this school is! I ended the day in third, with the top four all being separated by attempts. Nothing is set in stone yet, but next semester I might step away from this competition and instead help out with the setting.
The following competition as well as the most recent one were youth locals at Rockn' and Jamn' and my home gym Earth Treks. It is unlikely that I will be doing the youth circuit this summer as I have an already packed competition schedule. However, I will be making a showing at regionals a few weeks from now, so it's nice to have a back up plan.
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| CCS Nationals Final Route photo cred: USAClimbing |
Finally, my best and biggest competition this month was CCS Nationals held at Mesa Rim in San Diego. The competition had almost 400 climbers from universities all over the US, some of which I have never heard of. As the only climber from my school, I realized that Mines is really missing out. After a very close finals round, I ended in 2nd for sport, on a podium dominated by Colorado. From what I have seen this year, CCS is constantly growing, with more and better climbers competing every year. I am interested in watching it develop through the years and I'll be there every step of the way.
On a less competitive note, I only managed to go outdoors twice this month. One was to hop on my project, which, well, still remains a project. The week after, Sean, a friend from back in Australia, came up to climb around Colorado (as well as make me lose the game of life a few times). Even with the unlucky snowy weather, we drove down to Morrison to climb around the Black Hole. I got a quick send of Cytogrinder (V8), and then tested my endurance on a 100 ft V11, which I still have to come back for.
Now it's time to train and get ready for the Vail World Cup in June. It might be a bit hard through finals but in the summer, I will have plenty of time to not only train but explore the outdoors. Get ready for the next blog post about my first few summer adventures to places such as Rocky Mountain National Park.
