Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

The male semi-finals featured some extremely strong climbers and the setters had managed to come up with some formidable hard problems to seperate them out. Even the first problems was pretty brutal, featuring a hand-jam early on:

Local hero Jacob Straw demonstrates the hand-jam...

The head wall featured a powerful compression move:

Tom Bunn demonstrates the compression move on the top section...

Followed by a dyno to the big blue volume for the finish.

Neil Gresham controls the swing on the last move after powering up the problem in less than a minute.

Nathan Phillips tops the first problem against a the picturesque backdrop that is Exeter riverside.

At this point, with the rain slackening, assistant judge Bingo decided to assess the mood in the audience:


Newberry and Frughniet were obviously immune to the rain — although as a good Cardiffian, you'd expect Rhos to have a high tolerance for precipitation; I remember being shocked, my first year there, by quite how much rainful the city got and quite how often it seemed to show up. Not, of course, that Exeter is any drier...


The second route found Mikey Cleverdon very much in his element. First there were a couple of the sort of powerful dynamic moves that he usually has for breakfast:


Then a nice middle section:


Followed by a convenient rest, which provided a perfect opportunity to work his home crowd up into frenzy:


The afternoon also featured some truly spectular costume choices on the parts of some of the competitors. This amazing, shimmery ensemble featured in yesterday's qualies and seems to have survived its dip in the River Exe:


While this competitor deserves nothing but greatest of respect, firstly for sticking the amazing dyno and secondly for eschewing the standard topless look of most of the entrants — as chosen by the climber on the left — in favour of a full-on fairy costume complete with wings!



The final problem in the men's semi-finals opened with a difficult dyno that caused more than a few of the competitors to drop straight into the drink.

Tom Bunn shows how to control the swing on the first move — effectively a swinging jump from the red smiley face to the blue jug with an intermediate step on the second orange volume. The black object on the bottom edge is a strategically placed bouldering mat intended to deflect climbers into the water, should they slip off the hold.

After sticking a big long pinch on the roof and getting the feet out, the next move went up to a sloper and then to a big round hold on a volume above the overhang. Subsequent moves required a heel-hook match followed by a move up to a particularly tiny crimp.

Local hero Rory Bascombe about to go for the tiny blue crimp at the top of the picture...

Rory roars his way up to a terrible sloper.

The next step involves going out right to the tiny crimp to finish rocking on to the right foot, followed by a delicate move up to a similarly bad crimp on the top of the volume. Then it's out right to match both hands on another bad sloper with the feet on the first blue hold above the overhang, and then a very hard pop for final little pocket to finish. The problem was so hard that none of the competitors managed to stick the last move — although two got close enough to touch the final hold.

Within seconds of the last competitors going through, the barge was swung round to face the wharf to allow the setters to strip the wall and reset it ready for the finals, giving the rest of us an hour and a half to wander round and amuse ourselves until the start of the finals.

A reasonably good finishing time of 20:05 this morning — not too shabby considering I'd spent yesterday afternoon thrashing routes at the climbing centre. The turnout was impressively high this morning — in the three hundreds for the first time — helped by the bank holiday crowds and the good weather. L was there with his parents — his dad did the 5K with him and we met up with his mum at the Quay at the end of the run.

Instead of going straight home, I stayed down and watched the women's Deep Water Solo qualifiers in the canal basin. The field was slightly smaller than last year and I ended up staying for the morning — during which I became more and more worried about sunburn — to cheer the competitors on.

As with the women's final, the format of the men's competition was also a speed elimination, with top six going head to head on the same problem with the fastest three going through to the second round. The problem, set in the middle of wall and featuring the wrecking ball, featured a number of dynos, including one across a big star of volumes in the middle of the upper section.

The problem starts on the volume and then up to a couple of footholds:

Vincent Boucher at the very start.

...a move on to the wrecking ball...

Max Ayrton moves onto the wrecking ball

...out again with a move to a mono pocket...

Nathan Phillips makes easy work of the pocket

...down to a volume...

Matt Cousins moves down to the volume

...and the first real dyno...


...round the overhang using the crack created by the two volumes immediately above...

Wiz Fineron moves past the overhang

...a little campus onto the star...

Matt Varela-Christie campuses

...ready for another dyno...


...across the face of star...


...on to a couple of tiny crimps...


...with a last throw for the big ledge...


...and the bell and the finish!


The times for all this were nothing short of astonishing: Matt Cousins set the pace in the first round, flashing the problem in the staggeringly quick time of 38.06 seconds! After a rest to allow the second round of the women's final, the top three men — Cousins, Matt Varela-Christie, and Vincent Bouchet — returned to duel it out.

On his second attempt Varela-Christie managed to get his time down to 28.56 seconds. So with Bouchet on 35.69, it all came down to Cousins' final run which was superbly quick right up to the point where a slip on the final crimp cost him valuable points thanks to a premature splashdown, giving victory to Matt Varela-Christie and second place to Vincent Bouchet.

In line with the forecast, the morning was every bit as a cold and wet as predicted, so I took a while to get going and didn't get down to the river until eleven or so, just in time to see Jenna on her last problem. Conditions were pretty grim and the wall was quite wet despite an improvised awning of umbrellas along the top, and eventually a hour's halt was called to allow the setters to rig up a shelter out of planks and tarpaulins.

By the time the women's semis resumed at one, the new canopy was in place and the weather was starting to break but sadly it was still too drizzly for photos. Emma Twyford completed her series of top-outs, Rhos Frugtniet was on very strong form much to everyone's delight, and soon we were into the men's semis.

All the semi-final problems were extremely tricky, with few of even the very best of the competitors making it up to the middle sections of the final problem. Steve McClure was on particularly good form — the setting rewarded his more static style of climbing over the dynamism of some of the others — but only a very small number completing the problem, although Matt Varela-Christie came very close but was unable to quite match both hands on the final hold for the required two seconds.

Running behind schedule after the break for rain, the setters were coming down to start stripping off as soon as the last competitors were through, with the wall swung back into the dock almost immediately to allow them to reset ready for the finals.

A fun first day at this year's Exeter Deep Water Solo competition, with the morning dedicated to the women's comp with the afternoon focusing on the men. Unlike last year, where the sponsored team climbers joined at a later stage, this year's format required everyone to climb in each round — a response to the large numbers of very strong climbers who did so well that they ended up in the semi-finals.

Emma Twyford jumps in after her final problem. The wall is designed such that competitors can't top out even if they succeed in sending the most difficult problem, guaranteeing that even the very best have to get wet at some point!

The first of the women's comp problem looked relatively straight-forward and everyone seemed to cruise up it with ease:

Eve topping out on the first problem. It was an extremely slick performance and she positively breezed up it.

The second problem was far harder, with a ball a couple of feet in diameter and featuring a couple a handholds dangling from a chain in the middle of the set. The official beta involved hooking a heel on one of the holds below the overhang and before sitting on the wrecking ball — as it inevitably got called by the commentators!

Izzy Bentley makes easy work of the EP wrecking ball...

The whole section was extremely unforgiven to anyone who inadvertently cut loose, with recovery only possible by building up enough momentum to swing back on to the wall:

Andrea Kovacs-Simon campuses on the wrecking ball. (ETA: Monday's Express and Echo features a very similar photo on the cover!)

The final problem was extremely hard, with small crimps from the start and a pull up over the first overhang using the orange volume:

Izzy Bentley on the third and final qualifiers problem.

Once past the overhang, the next move was up to a sloper and a couple more crimps before an extremely delicate move to the final hold:

Jessie Tucker on the upper section of the last problem. I have a feeling she didn't quite send it, but she came very, very close.

Christine Lowry was one of the few to complete the problem:


As was Emma Twyford, who obviously wasn't enthusiastic about the state of the water in the dock:

The male and female semi-finals, held on Sunday, featured a combination of qualifying competitors from the first round of the open competition with various professional climbers making up the different, with the last eight from each going through into the finals.

( Female semi-finals )

The male semis took place almost immediately after the female comp had finished and featured a much larger field, with some of the local hopefuls not scheduled to appear until mid-afternoon. But although a certain amount of cynicism set in once the first couple of routes had been sent a few times, it was an exciting process and because only one person managed to send the last of the problems, I manage to maintain some sense of anticipation right up until the very end.

( Male semi-finals )

Almost as soon as the last of the men were off the route and before the barge had had time to swing round to allow access from the wharf, the Entre-Prise setters were on the wall to strip off the holds and reset for the finals. And somehow, in under two hours, they'd managed to clean the wall, set big new problems, and get the barge back into position ready for the last rounds of the competition — a seriously impressive feat!

Spent most of the day at the Deep Water Soloing competition at down at the canal basin. I arrived in time to catch most of the women's comp and stayed for the mens. It was exciting stuff and some of the problems looked impressively difficult.

For those not familiar with the format, here's how deep water soloing works. Someone constructs a large climbing wall on a floating platform, with the wall designed so that it overhangs the water. In the case of today's competition, the wall was seven metres high and built on barges in the canal basin down by Piazza Terracina.



The wall is set with three groups of problems of increasing levels of difficult, with the competitors starting on the easiest and working their way up to the hardest. The first two problems were set to allow the competitors to top out at the end, while the final problem — someone told me it was graded around a V8 — required them to plunge into the water one they'd completed it. In this case, each of group of problems featured three different sets of coloured holds to differentiate the competition classes: green for under 16s; red for open women's comp; and blue for open men's.

Each competitor gets a three minute window to make a single attempt at the problem. If they make a mistake and fall off, they land in the water ending their attempt. Each attempt is judged and scored by a panel, so points are awarded even if the competitor doesn't send the problem, with the top people in each class going through to tomorrow's final.

I took lots of photos, the best of which are on Google, but here are a few highlights.

I don't think anyone sent the final problem in the open female comp, although two extremely awesome competitors did get manage to get a hand on the final hold.

( Women's competition... )

Only one person sent the last problem in the male open comp, although someone else came very, very close:

( Men's competition... )

It was also good to see a few familiar faces out there, working the problems:

( Fellow Sunday boulders at work... )

I had a good time and even went so far as to splash out on a blue DWS hoodie — in my defence, it was colder than I'd expected and the shivering wasn't conducive to the taking of photos! I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's open finals and pro competition.