Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Spent an enjoyable afternoon watching the finals of the end of summer bouldering competition at the Quay. The last four problems, set out on an area of the main wall, were mostly volumes with a handful of tiny holds. Despite only putting up one placeholder, I'm going to break things up into categories just to make things easier to find.

Following the open male competitors were the those in the open female category, climbing a very slightly altered version of the problems set for the men. I haven't been through all my photos — the camera was struggling a bit with the low light levels indoors — but I've culled out a few decent snaps from the roll and included them below...

( Open female competition photos... )

Spent an enjoyable afternoon watching the finals of the end of summer bouldering competition at the Quay. The last four problems, set out on an area of the main wall, were mostly volumes with a handful of tiny holds. Despite only putting up one placeholder, I'm going to break things up into categories just to make things easier to find.

The first to go after the under 16s were the over 30s, all of whom were pretty amazing. This photo gives a pretty good impression of the lower sections of the first two problems, going from left to right. The first was very blocky with pentagonal volumes for the feet at the start, while the second featured a number of domed volumes which some people made short work of using something like a crack climbing technique.



The third route started was made up of teardrop volumes with what looked like a very powerful starting move up on the first grey volume and lots of balance work in the middle while the fourth was mostly a question of working the edges of some tetrahedral volumes.

( Over 30s competition photos... )

A day of climbing and bouldering with R and H, which worked out well after a slightly wobbly start. In the process I managed to take a horrible fall — I screwed up the second clip on a lead route — and it was only R's quick reactions that saved me from hitting the deck. H said afterwards that he didn't think he'd've been able to do it. But the fall wasn't enough to keep me down and I immediately hopped back on the same route, doing about half of it before deciding I couldn't work out the next couple of moves.

After R headed off for a quiet afternoon of dog walking and quality parental time, H and I put in a bit of time on in the bouldering room and I picked up what were probably my final ten points in the summer league — the last round ends tomorrow — with a quality flash of a mid-ranking problem. We finished up, had pizza for lunch, doubled back to the Quay to allow me to update my scorecard with my success — something I'd managed to forget as we were leaving — and headed to station where H missed his train by a matter of seconds. We then popped back to my place for an hour before returning to the station where H managed to catch the next train with barely a minute to spare.

A short, focused evening of climbing and bouldering with M. I finished flashed two new league problems, both of which I'd previously put aside in the hope that I'd be able to do them first time if I picked my moment. One was a fun traverse across a 40 degree overhang and the other was all slopers, all of which turned out to be pretty positive if you kept your weight in the right place. We then climbed a bunch of top rope routes, only one of which was new, and called it a day, trudging home in the pouring rain...

Having slept badly thanks to a combination of the heat and the heavy rain, I decide to go for an early morning swim. The pool was quiet with just a few people in swimming lanes — one of my favourite situations because being forced to keep pace with someone swimming crawl forces me to push myself harder than usual. I stopped off at the supermarket on the way home and used the opportunity to pick up my most recent batch of contact lenses from the optician, only to be caught a torrential downpour five minutes from home.

I met Dr S and F down at the Jolly Roger for lunch — a generous and rather tasty cheese and pickle sandwich for me while the others went for classic breakfast fare — before a walk along the river, across Grace Road playing field and back to the climbing centre for tea and one on Chef Paul's cakes. Having brought my kit — just in case opportunity presented itself — I blitzed up a couple of auto routes and stayed on once the others had left to work on some of the bouldering league problems.

I spent an hour pottering in the bouldering rooms, talking to a nice couple who'd asked me for betas on a few of the problems — fortunately ones I'd already sent! — and I talked them through the circuit board — which I was still able do despite not having practiced it since the start of the league. I successfully nailed the next couple of problems on my card — sadly only for single points — and finished with a couple more auto routes, leaving tired but happy.

On the way home, just at the point where Quay Hill joins The Quay and bends right into Commercial Road, the corner was blocked by a coach which had made the first part of the turn only to discover that it had very little clearance on the left to complete the manoeuvre. The driver, looking somewhat concerned, nursed it very carefully round with a series of controlled blips while his relief kept him up to date on his clearance, eventually getting the wheels round far enough that he was able to round without touching anything — even the prominent one-way sign next to the pub. It was such a great piece of driving the impromptu crowd that had formed waiting for the road to clear gave him a round of applause. I don't think I've ever seen anyone look quite so relieved in my life...

Slightly tricky bit of scheduling today after I realised that my appointment with the plumber overlapped with my benchmarking session — yet another GMT/BST confusion. Fortunately I got home in time to run complete the testing before the guy came round to sort out the problem.

With work wrapped up and the domestic affairs in order, I went for an afternoon of bouldering. I repeated everything I'd done so far and started working on a couple of new problems — both of which require tricky balance — and something I can't even see how to start. I also checked the results for the first round and was pleased to discover I hadn't finished last. I hadn't done particularly well, coming somewhere in the last third or quarter, but I came out more or less where I expected relative to the rest of the usual boulderers.

After a relatively unproductive day at work, I had a productive and longer than expected evening of bouldering. I cracked three or four new problems and came within a fraction of sending another — I got both hands on the final hold, but couldn't stick them for a long enough to make it count — all for the low, low price of a couple of torn fingernails. Which seems like a fair exchange now but which may, by tomorrow morning, seem painfully expensive.

I also think I've got good solid plans for a some of the remaining problems. But having made first attempts on some of them and concluded that they ought to be possible, I decided to hold off until next session, when I'll hopefully be fresh enough to do something of them without fading midway through...

Bouldering this afternoon, someone mentioned that the setter had posted a video showing his official way to do the problem I was working. Although I haven't yet put everything together, it's pleasing to see how closely my solution matches the approved method. Now all I have to do is nail the transition out of the roof and it pretty much solves itself...

Reasonably successful initial attempt at the first round of bouldering problems. Most of them were straight forward, although I almost screwed up one the easier ones because I hadn't realised that the feature was in — a fairly common mistake, apaprently — making the whole thing much harder than it should have been. I'm not expecting to do well over all — I'm pretty sure they next few problems are too slopey to make a go of — but I rather like the discipline of attempting to get things right as quickly as possible rather than working them as projects.