Jamie Chong

We’ve spent the last three nights in Barcelona (here they pronounce the ‘c’ as ‘th’). Before we arrived we climbed another two days at Ceuse. The climbing is phenominal. I didn’t do a single route that I didn’t like. It’s too bad we had to leave because I was just starting to feel like I had a bit of endurance.

There was some drama at the crag however. I watched a 19 year old Norwegian kid fall 20 meters (60 feet) and hit the ground. His girlfriend who had been belaying was using an ATC and let go of her brake hand when he fell from the top of the route. I heard him let out a viscious scream, which at least let us know that he was still conscious. Luckily he landed in some thick, dense bushes that softened the landing. Otherwise I think the fall would have been fatal. Everyone at the crag was quick to help and a rescue team arrived via helicopter within 30 minutes. He was then airlifted to a hospital in Gap. I found out later that the climber suffered a broken ankle and two fractured vertebrae. Not bad considering the distance he fell!!

The reason we came to Barcelona was for Sean to compete in a World Cup. He flashed both his qualifiers and did very well in semi finals. In the end Sean came 4th place after Adam Ondra, Ramon Julian and Sachi Anma. The competition was hosted in one of the stadiums built for the 1992 Olympics. There were over 1500 people spectating finals. I imagine that if climbing were to become an Olympic sport it would be run similar to this event. The fact that the venue was in a large Olympic stadium made it feel like a big competition.

When Sean wasn’t climbing we took in Barcelona’s attractions. My favourite was La Sagrada Familia, a palace architected by a guy name Gaudi. Construction began in 1882 and is still being worked on today! There is so much detail in this building; no two pillars and no two doors are alike. Barcelona is a great city to tour around. I would definitely come back to see more. However, I could never stay here for a long period of time. It’s too populated and too polluted. Too often a whiff of raw sewage is caught while walking the city streets. It’s gross! Barcelona makes Vancouver look like a nature reserve.

Now we are off to climb in Rodellar for two days. It will probably be way too hot, but at least it’s new scenery. After that Sarah and I will likely part ways from Sean and Mathilde. We might travel to Rome or maybe Greece. As of right now we’re still undecided. We do plan to be in Paris before we travel to Valence for the Youth World Championships. Can any of you recommend a place for us to go?

I’m back at McDonald’s using their free wifi. We are currently in Gap, the town closest to Ceuse. I’ve put in two days of route climbing already, but I haven’t been on anything harder than 12c. My endurance is horrible. The hike up to the crag is thankfully not nearly as bad as I had imagined.

We arrived here two days ago after a short drive from l’Argentiere where the TAB competition was held. The comp was very well organized and a lot of fun. Qualifiers ran over two days; a three hour session per day. There were 47 problems and every problem counted towards the final score. There were V14 climbers doing V0s to get the points. Sarah placed 34th out of 54 open females and I came 29th from 111 open males. Sean made finals and clinched 2nd place after flashing the 4th boulder. The prize money for second place was €1000!! When are competitions in Canada going to get to this level?

The next day we drove towards Gap. On the way we stopped at a nice lake off the side of the highway. We spent about three hours swimming, tanning and lazing. When we got back to the car we discovered the most horrible thing: the car was broken into. The window wasn’t smashed but the passenger door was pryed open in order to unlock it. I’m usually pretty paranoid about leaving my bag unattended, but for some reason I left it in the car. In it was my Macbook, headphones and $700 wide angle lens, which had already been stolen once before. Sarah’s day pack with all her climbing gear was gone. Sean lost his bag of climbing gear and Mathilde’s laptop was also taken. Luckily Sean’s prize money was still in the car; the thieves didn’t search through anything, they just took what was easily accessible. In terms of value I think I was hit the hardest. I’ve definitely been feeling a bit down over the last few days. Hopefully that will subside over time. At least I didn’t lose any photos because I hadn’t even had the chance to upload them from my camera yet.

We are planning two more climbing days in Ceuse then we will drive to Barcelona with a brief stop in Valence along the way. Sean will be competing at a world cup there. Sarah and I will act as coach and physio so we can get greater than spectator access. We’ll probably spend 4 days in Barcelona then we’ll go to Rodellar to climb in the sun for a few days.

There is still a lot of time left in our trip, we won’t be back until September. However there are some exciting things awaiting us when we get home. Before I left I sold my Condo. This means that Sarah and I will be home-shopping as soon as we get back. We’re looking for a place on the North Shore. By then there should also be prime conditions in Squamish!

Unfortunately I don’t have a way to upload photos to this blog post. Until I figure out a way to do so, my words will have to suffice.

There are 37 days remaining in our European vacation. Sarah and I are tirelessly waiting for our 11:50 pm flight out of Canada. First stop: Paris. We will enjoy a lovely 3 hours of Parisian culture before we EasyJet ourselves to Nice. We land at 10:30 pm after losing most of Monday to time spent in the air and 9 hours of timezone change. Sean McColl is supposed to pick us up and take us to a lovely hotel he’s booked. Although, I haven’t talked to Sean in over a week so I hope it will be the reunion we had arranged. The next day will be spent on the beaches of Nice, a nice introduction. Then we drive a few hours north to some town I cannot pronounce where we’ll compete at the Tout à Blocs. From then on, everything else is unplanned and open ended. I’ll keep you posted with photos and stories of our adventure. See you all in September!

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!