Bouldering?!
What is bouldering?! Well, it's rock climbing, but more specifically, it's a more technical rock climbing that is done lower to the ground without being harnessed in. Without a harness a climber is able to perform more difficult moves, contort in more complicated ways, and can move in any direction: much more technical versus top rope climbing (using a harness) which is more brute strength.
Indoor climbing, (both top rope climbing & bouldering) uses routes, meaning that only certain hand and feet holds can be used, which are dictated by matching colored tapes. All holds, including the start and end holds are specified and dictated by colored tapes and are rated by difficulty. For example, if I am working on a certain route to complete it successfully I need to only use the holds that have purple tape sticking off them, this can be seen on the photo below.
Competition?
Generally bouldering routes are graded from V0 (easiest) to V15 (hardest) and the scale is definitely NOT linear. This means the difference in difficulty between a V0 and a V1 is less than the difference between a V1 and a V2.
The routes are marked on the competition wall, given a letter, and a point value between 0 to around 800-900 (at least at the competitions I go to) These values represent their difficulty. A climb with a value of 250 is a mid V2 level climb. For every route you complete properly you get that point value added to your sheet. If you flash the route, meaning you did it properly without falling or error the first time then you get an additional 10% (of the points) bonus! You climb whenever your time slot is for as long as you can and use your top 5 scores. There are generally divisions for beginner, intermediate, and expert. The top of the top then battle it out in a very lengthy problem to the end and after this competition everyone gathered together at the end for food and to party.
So How Did I Do?
Considering this was my very first time entering a competition I had no clue what I was getting into and had no idea how I would do, so my goals were set low. I also didn't know how the categories were divided and how I would even do on a new wall. I have been predominantly an indoor climber and all of the wall up until now have been flat, plain, unfeatured walls and I was very surprised to see that Penn's wall is featured. Unfeatured walls are flat where as featured walls are full of bumps, cracks, and features; more like an actual outdoor rock climbing experience. My best scores were all flash bonuses and I ended up climbing mostly V1s and V2s with a total score of 1, 022 as seen by the score card below. I ended up doing well enough to bump my score into the intermediate scoring category, which was great since I am really only a beginner, but at the same time it was unfortunate that I was put in a category out of my league: I was the bottom of the barrel.
The Good:
The Good:
- FIRST COMPETITION
- Tried out a new wall, and a featured one at that
- Experienced a new type of activity
- Hung out with all my friends
- I was better than I thought and got bumped up to intermediate
- I started off on a roll
The Bad:
- I was the worst of the intermediates
- All of my good climbs happened within the first half of the competition
- I didn't place at all
- I got very frustrated towards the end due to my lack of completion & progress
The Ugly:
- I started throwing a fit due to my halted progress, it was a little embarrassing but I am a very passionate and competitive person.
Overall:
Overall, despite really getting annoyed by the end I did enjoy the challenge. It was nice being immersed in the climbing community with both my friends and colleagues, but also the other local collegiate climbers. I enjoyed the added challenge if trying to climb a featured wall and seeing how other walls set/are and am looking forward to competing in other ones in the future.
Have any of you ever climbed in a competition? Have you seen one? How did you like it?
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