Back to the boulders. It’s been a few weeks. I decided to just circuit today. To stay motivated I set an unrealistic goal of doing 250 points in one session. I quickly realized that this was out of my ability so I lowered the goal to 150 points. For those of you that don’t know what I mean just add up the grades of all the boulder problems you do in a single session. Repeats are not allowed. So if you climb a V5, V9 and V3, you get 17 points. I also told my self that V3 was the easiest problem I was allowed to do. Here’s the list of boulder problems I did in order.

1. Titanic, 3 pts
2. Titanic Low, 5 pts
3. It’s About Time, 5 pts
4. Air Tight Garage, 6 pts
5. Tim’s Sloper Problem, 5 pts
6. Sesame Street, 8 pts
7. Viper, 5 pts
8. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 7 pts
9. Sloppy Poppy, 4 pts
10. Sloppy Poppy Traverse, 4 pts
11. Hoop Wrangler, 5 pts
12. Autobody (aka Fixin’ the Car), 8 pts
13. Mantel Madness, 4 pts
14. Worm World Cave, 8 pts
15. Atlas, 4 pts
16. Trad Killer, 4 pts
17. Heartbreak Hotel, 3 pts
18. Stinger Left, 6 pts
19. No Troublems, 9 pts
20. Jack’s Baby, 5 pts
21. Mindbender, 7 pts
22. Master Plan, 7 pts
23. Golden Boy, 7 pts
24. SDS to Holm Boy, 6 pts
25. Swank Stretch, 5 pts
26. Easy Chair, 4 pts
27. Superfly, 4 pts
28. Wafer Thin, 5 pts
29. Crack Head, 3 pts

If I add everything up correctly that’s 156 points! I didn’t need to do one of the last problems, but I had lost count and I wanted to make sure I got past 150. I’m pretty psyched on this list. Most of the problems are well known classics. I didn’t even get down to the Gibb’s cave area. I think next time I could easily hit 200 points. Especially if I planned a little better. 30 problems in one session, especially on a hot day, is very draining. My skin is trashed and my toes really hurt (I’m also breaking in new Miura VS’). Having a few more hard problems in there would help for sure.

Circuiting is a great alternative to spending an entire day sessioning a project. You get a lot of mileage. Joining someone else’s circuit is good too because you usually climb new problems or at least one’s you don’t do often.

Do any of you guys have a Squamish circuit that you want to share here? It doesn’t have to be for points. It could be a warm up circuit, a V5 only circuit, a “Problems that start with S” circuit… you name it!

She’s too modest to tell everyone herself so I’ll do it for her. Vikki Weldon sent Division Bell in Chekamus Canyon, Squamish yesterday! It happened on her first attempt at around 8:00pm. The temps had cooled off considerably in the evening, but it was still too warm in my opinion. We didn’t talk about it however, nothing negative! Her determination paid off, rewarded with a hefty accomplishment.

So this begs the question: Is Vikki the first female to redpoint Division Bell? I’m 99% positive she is. Furthermore, how many other Canadian women have climbed 13d recently? I can’t think of many that have challenged the level that Jola Sandford pushed 10 years ago. Come on ladies, step it up!

Vikki first got on The Bell in September, 2008. She says that it’s the longest time she’s spent working a route. There’s no doubt Division Bell is hard. I’ve seen it spew off many strong, capable climbers. The moves are powerful and parts of it are technical. It makes sense that Vikki, a strong technical climber, suits the route well.

Vikki Weldon knee-dropping her way through the crux of Division Bell, 13d.

So I gotta say that I feel privileged to witness such a noteworthy ascent. Great work Vikki! You’re an inspiration to climb with. Now it’s time to start working Pulse!!

My good friend Sean McColl is competing at the World Championships in Xining, Qinghai, China. This event is a huge. It’s like a bunch of World Cups rolled into one. There’s a difficulty lead comp, a bouldering comp, and a speed comp. The event runs from June 30th to July 5th, 2009. I’ve been watching results and Sean is doing quite well. He’s made semi finals for both bouldering and lead events ranked at 11th and 1st, respectively. He didn’t do so well in the speed event, but really, speed climbing is lame. Semi-finals happen this weekend with bouldering on Saturday and lead on Sunday.

The comp wall. Click to enlarge.

Sean has been traveling through Europe for almost 3 months already. He’s been competing in World Cups, Roc Trips, and climbing outside. The World Championships wasn’t one of Sean’s destinations because China was too far away and expensive to travel to. With the help and encouragement from our climbing federation, Competition Climbing Canada (CEC), Sean made the journey to Chinaland to compete in this awesome event. The CEC is the same organization that backs our sanctioned competitions in Canada. It’s a group of mainly volunteers that all want to see climbing grow as a sport in Canada. Sean has been supported by this organization since his first international competition when he was 14 years old.

Let’s all wish Sean luck this weekend. Go Canada Go!

Despite the sketchy weather this weekend, I was still able to put a full day of climbing in. I got out with Edge Crew members Ryder Hoy and Laura Crowe-Hutchon, fellow coach Vikki Weldon, and good friend Rob Arthurs. We trekked to Chekamus Canyon for some sports action. My Impreza had no problem with the hill leading to the upper parking lot. And after a short flat hike, we arrived.

Dry on a rainy day

With overcast weather, an early afternoon start, and many cars parked in the lots, I anticipated a large crowd. Surprisingly, we were the first ones at the Circus Wall! I suppose popular areas like the Forgotten Wall have drawn people away from the more classic Chekamus locations, which is just fine with me.

Vikki Weldon warming up on the Heifer

We spent the first few hours trying routes on the Circus. Ryder and Laura both sent Face the Music, while I snapped some pics. By then more people arrived, but there were still no lineups for routes. At around 3pm it started to drizzle, but the timing was perfect because we were warmed up and ready to run laps on the Big Show Wall. Vikki has been working Division Bell, so she was psyched to put in more redpoint burns. I just wanted re-redpoint the Bell and Pulse. Laura and Ryder were keen to get on something steep and intimidating.

Ryder Hoy wondering what a Fleeing Heifer is.

Laura Crowe-Hutchon redpointing Face the Music

At the base of the routes there were some Petzl draws left behind. Probably traces of Joe Kinder’s recent visit. (By the way, I agree, Gom Jabbar is not a route!) Anyway, it continued to rain while we all got on the steep awesomeness. Vikki almost redpointed Division Bell! She got through the crux with her funky drop-knee beta, rested using a painful knee-bar, then pushed through the last powerful sequence. She was just a little too juiced and fell 5 moves from the top. I struggled my way up Pulse, then flailed miserably on Free Will.

Vikki Weldon nearly redpointing Division Bell

We ended our day at around 8pm with Sushi goodness for dinner and an Indy Car Race home. I had a good day with great friends. I’m tempted to spend the rest of my summer on a rope. I could use the endurance training for when I travel to France this August. Ceuse is a destination so I need to be able to climb 30 meter pitches!

I’m sitting in the Saskatoon airport on my way home from the Canadian Youth National Championships. The Edge Climbing Team had great success and I’m excited to coach these young rock stars in preparation for the World Youth Championships in Valence, France in August this year. I’m planning a trip to Europe for the end of July and all of August, so I’ll be able to attend this event to help coach the Canadian Team.

Other exciting comp news is Sean McColl‘s 2nd place finish in Vienna, Austria this weekend. This is Sean’s best performance to date on the World stage. It is also Canada’s best finish in a World Cup ever. Sean told me a little bit about finals in an email he sent me yesterday:

Actually it was problem number 2 that was hard, only me and the guy that won did it, i fucked up on problem 3 by tagging the last hold, but managed to flash the last one to get second place…

Sean also sent me a text that said, “2nd is pretty good, right?”, which by reading between the line tells me how excited he is about this result.

The Euros are definitely going to be following Sean closely this season. He is eager to clench a 1st place finish. There are still another handfull of World Cup bouldering and roped events that Sean will be competing in over the next few months. It’s not hard to imagine Sean attaining his goal this competition season.