South Sound Pull Down

The crowd gathers at the Warehouse Rock Gym

Saturday was the 2^nd annual South Sound Pull Down. Olympia’s own bouldering competition at the Warehouse Rock Gym. In last years comp I narrowly beat Micah for the top spot in the men’s category. So I was psyched to defending my title, especially when I heard about the prizes; a 60m rope for the highest-scoring male. And I was feeling pretty strong this year having trained with the Warehouse climbing team for the last few months. Laura was equally as psyched to see how she would fare, last year she didn’t make the comp cause of work commitments.

We turned up early in order to scope out the problems, there was already a lot of people there including a few that had made the trip down from Tacoma, I recognised some of them from the crags so I knew I would have some tough competition. At 3pm the comp got under way, I started out with some easier problems to warm up on. Then Micah and I got stuck into one of the hardest problems there, a steep prow with a cryptic sequence worth 1040 points. After a few goes each, figuring out the moves, I latched the finishing jug to the cheers of the spectators, so far a good start to the comp. I was checking out some other hard problems, when whispers spread though the crowd that Johnny G and his crew from Seattle had turned up. Yeah right, I thought, he’s a V13 crushing sponsored climber, what was he doing in our little gym in Olympia? I checked it out and sure enough, Johnny G, Joel Campbell, Dimitri and a strong female climber had come down for the comp. There goes the rope!

It was cool that they turned up though, I think everyone stepped up their game and it was a good test for the route setters. Credit to Jimmy for setting the hard problems, he set some really hard ones that even took Johnny G a while to send, the hardest problem worth 1080 points must rank in at around V10 or so. There were also some other strong competitors like Nathan who came down from Seattle, and David who came in 3^rd place last year turned up for the comp as well. I climbed hard throughout the comp and managed another 1000 point problem a 960, a 900 and got in a 880 right at the end to give myself a fairly respectable overall score. The total score is based on the sum of your highest 5 problems. The full results are up Jimmy's blog now, it turns out I finished in 4th place right behind the guys from Seattle. I scored the highest out of everyone from Olympia which I guess was my goal, so it was a good result overall. Laura did really well, and got up some hard problems including an 800 point problem. She was in the women’s advanced category and finished in 2^nd place overall, closely behind the girl from Seattle.

I think its fair to say that the competition was a big success and went off without a hitch. A lot of effort was put into the route setting and the organisation of the comp so I’d like to say a big thanks to Jimmy and the rest of the staff at the WRG for putting on another great comp.