BMC Youth Climbing Series 2015 Round 1 - Dynamic Rock

As usual for a competition day I woke up early on Saturday to travel to Swansea with my mum and my brother for the first round of the youth climbing series. We stopped off in McDonalds for some hash browns before heading off to the centre.

Once we arrived at the centre we went straight to look at the routes and boulders. We really liked the look of some of out climbs and couldn't wait until the competition started. This round we remembered to fill in the consent form before getting to the competition which made registration a lot easier.

I started to warm up with my brother until Joe (from Boulders) lead a competition warm up which we joined instead. Climbing started straight away after the warm up was finished.

The girls were climbing first and I was in the middle of the line up for the first climb. I am not really bothered when I climb but, if I had the choice, I would be toward the beginning. When it was my turn everyone before me had topped the route. It looked really easy and I topped it without any problems. After this I went to watch my brother on his first bouldering problem which he also topped easily.


The second climb was a bit harder than the first but I topped it fairly easily. I really enjoyed climbing this route because it was well set and interesting. I was hungry after this so I had a blackcurrant fruit smoothie to give me energy for the final route.

I watched my brother do his last two bouldering problems. He climbed really well and was in joint first place after the bouldering.

My last climb looked quite a bit harder than the other two. It looked reachy and it took me a while to figure out how best to climb it.

I was fourth up on this climb and no one had topped it yet. I started the climb and did the first five clips easily and then the climb got difficult. The move to the Saturn hold was quite far, but it was an amazing hold and I stuck it. The next two moves were harder because the holds weren't as good and they were spread apart. Once I had made these two moves it was just the move to the top left. At the time the move looked quite far so I clipped the lower off from the second top hold to be safe. I then jumped for the top anyway and it wasn't as bad as I thought.

After lunch, around 1 o'clock, we started bouldering. But first we had to wait for category B to do their first problem before we could start ours. Our first problem was really easy and almost everyone topped it.

We had a long wait for the next problems so I went to watch Osc. climb his second route which he topped easily. By this time it was my turn on the second problem. After the first person it was my turn and I was really psyched! The first bit of the problem was pretty easy and there lots of heel hooks - although it was hard to figure out when I first looked at the problem. The second part of the problem was to move out of the roof and up towards the top. I got off the roof and made it to the second top hold, but I thought that I could make this move staticly so I climbed down to shake out, but when I went back up to try again I was too tired so I failed my first attempt. On second attempt I went for the hold and made it fairly easily. I was really annoyed that I hadn't done this first time around.



The final bouldering problem I thought was the same grade as the second. It was on a overhanging wall with a flat bit at the top. I was first up on this problem, and I wanted to complete it quickly so that I could watch my brother on his final route. I had read the problem really well and managed to top it first attempt.

The competition was great fun. The routes and blocs were really good fun to climb and Oscar and I really enjoyed the day.

Boulder Academy members dominated the podium by getting 7 out of the 9 top spots and 16 podium places altogether. This is thanks to our amazing coach Simon.

See the results here: http://indoorsout.co.uk/brycs15_waless_heat_1.htm