Madison ABS Competition and Team Training

The past week have been pretty exciting between a climbing comp and team training. Training on Wednesday, we did a few rounds of boulder problems then went to sport climbing. The boulder Problems we were working on were short routes with power moves in them. For sport climbing I was working on route that I have  yet to finish since the competition. I only have to finish one qualifier route and the final. In between each route that I attempted I would do a set of lead falls just to practice them and keep up with it. Thursday I was training but it was a light training. Friday I helped work with the Rockwall and it wasn't very busy so I started helping a buddy figure out the moves to a route and showing them different way to do them.  Saturday was the day of the ABS Competition held at Boulders Climbing Gym in Madison. When I was looking at the routes that we were on our score card. I was thinking that I was going to be able to to the 400 or 500 point routes. During the comp I ended up working on a lot of 300 point routes. I had a really good day of climbing Saturday because I was able to climb really hard route but my forearms never really pumped out. I was very happy with how I climbed for the day. I took 8th place out of 13 competitors for the day. I was really happy with that because the route were harder than they looked. Sunday the team headed up to adventure rock for another day of training. I was very surprised because my forearms were not sore. They were tight but that did not effect my climbing ability for the day. I was working on a bouldering problem that I have not finish yet but am getting closer and closer each time I try it. I tried a new boulder problem Sunday that got my the first time I tried it but then after taking a closer look at it I realized that I was missing a foot chip off to my right. After looking at it a little longer, I tried it again and stuck every move on the route and finished with a nice smooth finish. I was surprised that my forearms were even a little pumped out from the day before. Sunday two friends to their lead belay test at Adventure Rock so know I have both Lead and Top Rope belayers for when I go up there. For the day I was bouldering about V3 to low V5s and lead/top rope climbing I was around 5.10-5.12. There is a 5.11+ that is a ton of fun because there is a move were you have both hands pinching a sloper and then you are moving up to crimp. I really like the move and the route. The next few moves right after the two slopers are long because you run out of foot holds. All in all the day was really good. All the videos and pictures from both Saturday and Sunday are up on Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. Check them out there are a ton of really neat photos of the routes I was doing. Now I'm just training to get ready for Regionals and beyond!

First Bouldering Competition

This past Saturday I competed in my first ABS Competition held at Vertical Endeavors in Warrenville. I have been working on bouldering for about a month. When I started bouldering more I was climbing a V3, I am now climbing V5's on a regular basis and working on most V6's. For bouldering I felt pretty good because I have a hard time with power moves and that's what a lot of bouldering is. During the competition I warmed up on the Intermediate problems and then tried the Advanced problems. The intermediate route ranged from V3 to V5 and Advance was V5 to V7. I completed one advance route and five intermediate routes. I felt really good with how I was climbing the routes there. Some of them were pretty stretchy were made it hard to complete the route. Even though it seemed like the day was going by slow it was earlier to figure out where I was standing by the way my body was feeling. There was one route is the corner of the gym wall that I really liked. The finishing move was a technical move because I had to turn my hip over while lunge to the finish. After I finished climbing we did a raffle prize to give time for the judges to add up and put score cards in the correct order. We waited about an hour to get results but in the end it was worth the wait. I took 5th place out of 15 people in my division. I am very happy with that because I am not big on bouldering. I am looking forward to the rest of the ABS Season because I feel I will do very well. This new training program that I am doing is a lot of fun and can be very hard on some days. Some days I will be doing long routes that are V6 or harder. Other days I may have to do short routes with a pyramid of pull ups. School I have three classes a day so I get out at 12:30 pm. I have a lot of time between school and the start of training to finish my homework so I do not have to worry to much about finishing things after training. My sponsorship with So ILL Climbing has helped a lot with my bouldering. So ILL gave me a pro deal on gear that i got myself a nice crashpad. I am also waiting on a helmet that is coming in from KASK Helmets. KASK Helmets is giving a product sponsorship. All pictures and videos for the competition and gear are/will be posted to Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Check them out a lot of really cool photos from the competition.

Start of the New Season

The past two weeks I have been having a ton of fun competing in fun competitions. My first competition i helped set the routes for the intermediate division at Climb This, this competition took place at the Kenosha Y. For the competition I was in advanced division. The route were a lot of fun and I really liked the moves that were in them. The day of the competition I was feeling good but my forearms didn't agree with me or the rock wall. All of routes we about 5.11-5.13 and all were lead but one. I completed three of my five route that I had to climb and got half way on my final route. Result wise I took second place with a difference of one hold that had points given to it. I was pretty happy with how I did for having a rough day. The day after the competition I came back in and warmed up and went straight in to the routes that I was given for the competition. I flashed all the routes but the final. The final route I got four moves from the top hold. Where I got stuck you can do the move two way, either you can dyno for the next hold or you can grab to edge of the lip on the wall and do a very slow more up to the next hold. The day after the competition I was working on a certain move an a route and I went for the next hold but my hand slipping off and I fell about 12-15 feet. Due to the type of move and where i was located on the doing the move. That helped a lot with my next competition and will do a ton in the long run of things. I spend the next couple days trying to work the last couple move of the final. Thursday I got the last four moves so I went back to the beginning and tried the whole route. I got the the one tricky move and stuck it but got really pumped out right after that.

Friday, the 21st, we headed up to Adventure Rock for the Battles of the Ages competition. I got on some really neat routes there. There was one route that was about a 5.11+ that I had to do a knee bar in order to move my hands up with out falling off the wall. The route was a lot of fun. I really want to do that one again lead, though. For the night I was feeling really good about my climbing. I took second place in the 14-19 year old category. I have gotten a lot more comfortable with take lead falls which has spiked my climbing grades up again. Within the past two weeks I have gotten some new sponsors and have been sending out information for gear to companies that have sponsored me. Recently my coach had surgery on his wrist so he is unable to climb for about 4 months. I have a new climbing partners and he is helping me out a lot as I help him. Along with a new climbing partner, I have a new training program that is a 16 week program for both bouldering and sport climbing. Right now I am doing the bouldering program to help prepare for USA Climbing ABS Season. I have been in the Kenosha News Paper for 3 weeks straight now because of my climbing achievements and how its helping me with everyday challenges. My newest sponsor is KASK Helmets; other sponsors are ClimbTech, So ILL Climbing Holds, Powerbar, and FiveTen Climbing Shoes. Thank you to all the companies who have sponsored me this year and helping me further extend my climbing career. All of the photos are loaded to my Facebook and Flickr and all videos will be loaded to YouTube with in the week.

Interviews and New Sponsors

This past week went pretty great. I had an interview with Kenosha News about my trip to Utah and Nevada. Our interview was Thursday at 3 and it lasted about an hour and a half. Then today we had a photo/video shoot with Kenosha News. The photo shoot lasted about an hour. The photographer got 5 videos of us climbing and explain what we did while we out in Utah. He also got about 50 photos along with the 7 we sent to the writer for the paper. I have three sponsors and two companies giving me pro deal discounts. The three I have are PowerBar, Five Ten Climbing, and ClimbTech. The two I am getting pro deals from are Rock Candy holds and So ILL Climbing. I am almost with Petzl Climbing, I just need to show the number of outdoor routes I have done or attempted. I am pretty excited how I am doing right now with climbing. I am very excited that sponsors are starting to accept me for the their teams. Keep an eye out another posting here in the next week about my week of training.

Red Rock Canyon and St. George Climbing week

Red Rock and Zion National Park Climbing Trip

Before the week of climbing started, I found out that I had been chosen for the Five Ten Youth CORE Award as second place. I was pretty with happy with that and didn’t really know how to react to this. This helped get started a great start to the week of climbing that was going to be a tough road ahead.

Day 1-  Red Rock Canyon- Sandstone Quarry- Monday, we got a little confused with directions that were given to get us to the area of climbing that we originally wanted to go climb at so we headed over to Sandstone Quarry. The Front Corridor is really cool and I am very excited to get a chance to climb on it Tuesday. After we walked around looking and new areas to climbing, we went out to hike around and see the new sights. We went back to the Calico ll (pull off two) to see if there was anything there that we thought would be nice. I found an area that looked like a rainbow that also had an overhang in the middle of the face. The only problem was it was a mixed climbing area and we didn’t bring any cams with us.  The wall looked very cool and I really wish I had a chance to climb on it.  The day really turned in to mostly a hiking day and a sightseeing day. I got a lot of really neat pictures of the rock around us and where we would be climbing.  We set up new climbing routes that we planned to climb.

Day 2- Red Rock-Sandstone Quarry- Tuesday, we left the hotel around 530am in order to get to the rock by 6am. We had a pretty good idea on where we were going but didn’t know exactly where the routes were. Once we found the route that we planned on climbing. We had to determine which route was the warm up route. The warm up route and the harder route start the same until the second bolt. I got a little bit confused on which route I was climbing. I continued to climb up the route I was on and I was making a move towards the third bolt and my foot hold broke away. I ended up falling about 12 feet. While I was falling the corner that broke away hit the middle of my shin to my knee. It looks like road rash down my leg. I was a little upset that I was unable to finish the route but was very pleased that I took my sport climbing fall, along with just my second lead climbing fall since May. After the rope was set up for top rope, I was reading our handy little Red Rock book. I found out that the route I was climbing was a 5.11d. I tried the warm up after it was set up and made it no problems. During all of the climbs we had the GoPro Camera recording. We got a clear shot of my fall that I took. Which looked pretty beast!!!!

Day 3- St. George- Woodbury- Wednesday, we headed out to Woodbury Desert to climb the Black and Tan Wall. The route we took to get there was pretty entertaining because the road was hilly and very windy. Once we got there we hiked up the hill to find out that there was an Upper and lower portion of the wall. Again after figuring out that the routes are in a different order than the website said we found the route we wanted to do. The Route I started on was a 5.12a and made it just to the first bolt. The rock we were climbing was limestone so it was sharp. Since I took the fall yesterday my cut was still hurting a little and the limestone was not helping my case because it kept breaking out the scabs. The route we were climbing on at Black and Tan was a 5.9 that was 100 feet long. This route I made it to the fourth bolt and was unable to continue. I took a little break and let everyone else go try the route. I went after everyone else and completed the route. Over all the week has been going pretty well and I am happy with how I am doing.

Day 4- Thursday was a hiking day and trying to find some route that were in Kolob Canyon in the South Fork area. The day started out by driving to Zion National Park in the South Entrance. We drove through the scenic drive and I took a lot of really neat photos of the wall. The arch ways that we saw were very cool and wish that we were able to climb on them.  Going through the tunnel that was there we got a lot of neat photos going through the windows. Just outside the tunnel we saw three mountain goats on the side of the road eating. Farther up the road we saw a cave going in to the side of the rock. It looked like the tunnel went pretty far back. After Zion National Park we headed out to Bryce Canyon to hike and check out the soldiers there. Our first stop was the natural bridge that is there. It looks like the bridge extended farther than what it is now.  We went to Sunrise Point and hiked down about one mile. The sights of the rocks were really cool and being able to see the rocks that close up was awesome. After we finished hiking at Bryce Canyon, we headed to Kolob Canyon to find the routes we wanted to do. When we got there we just did the scenic drive to see all the rock then we went to find the routes. The trail to the routes was not a set trail so it was just something that few people walked frequently. The canyon narrowed the farther you went back but there was a creek that got in the way of the trail. We got to a point where we could not get across to the trail on the other side of the creek. We decided that it wasn’t going to be very easy to get where we did with climbing packs on because we had a hard time just by ourselves.

Day 5- Black and Tan- Friday we decided to go back to Black and Tan in St. George. We went to the same area of climbing but did a different route. I started off by leading the route to the top. I made it to the fifth bolt. After everyone else climbed the route I went back up the route to finish it. The day was very nice out on the rock. The valley was about 100 degrees and the little cave we were in was about 80 degrees with a nice breeze. The day of climbing was fun and hard at the same time. Everyone was pretty tired from the week of hard climbing. So we did two climbs then headed back to Las Vegas. Back in Las Vegas we went to the pool then got to the ready to go down the strip. We walked from the north end down to the south end of the strip. Our main stop was at M&M World. It was pretty cool to see all the different colors of M&Ms they had. The trip was a lot of fun and I would really like to do something like this again. The pictures of the both our hiking trips and when we were climbing are very cool and really show the shape of the rock. All the videos and pictures from this past week will be uploaded to Facebook, Youtube and Flickr.  

St. Louis Climbing Trip - June 14

Thursday we headed for St. Louis for a fun trip and to see family. Thursday when we got to the hotel we found out that our room would be on the 24th floor on the baseball field side over looking Busch Stadium. We had tickets for the Green Seats but was unable to get 4 seats together. We got 4 seats together right behind the Green Seats. We headed over to the ball park around 5:45 for a 7:10 game start time. The game match up was the Cardinals vs. the White Sox. The Sox ended up losing by 2. It was pretty fun though because my brother called me and said he thinks he saw me on tv. Friday we were looking for a place to get food before we went climbing. After we ate breakfast, we headed back to the hotel and packed up the rest of our clothing. At So Ill Climbing gym we got a locker, shoes, and headed off to the bouldering cave. I was able to climb a V3 for my warm up and then worked on V5s or higher (mostly V5s). When I headed to rope climbing I did one top rope route then went in the lead climbing. For my warm up on lead, I did a 5.10c that was 60 feet long and in an overhang and was pretty much like roof climbing. There was a move I did in order to clip my quickdraw that was really cool. I had my hands above my draw and my right foot even with my hands with my left foot flagging out behind my right high above my right foot. So it looked like I was climbing upside-down. Coolest move I have done so far this year. I felt pretty good and my next route was an 5.11c. I made another really cool move while climbing this route too. I was about 4 or 5 draws up and I was trying to clip the draw ahead of me. Flagging my right foot was not allowing for the stability that I was needing to make the draw. I had to do a heel hook and pull in pretty tight just to make the draw and not tip over to one side. I made it about 3/4s the way on the route and was really happy with it because I found a spot that was giving me tons of trouble. I did both of the 5.10c and 5.11c a few more times. Dinner we went to Olive Garden because that was what I wanted. Saturday, we head to the new Upper Limits in West County. My body was still pretty tired and beat up from the day before. We started off by warming up on a 5.9 then two 5.8s. Once I got warmed up I went on a 5.10 lead and got on another 5.10 that was fun but gave me a little trouble. I was a little off on lead climbing but still pushed till my body gave out. I stopped lead climbing and went to top rope climbing. I got on a 5.11 and it gave me challenge. There was a 5.10 that I got on that really didn't make to much sense. My brother gave it a shot and he got to the same spot I got to. After climbing we packed up and head to my grandma's house. It took about 45 min to get there. They were getting ready to go to church so we head to town for dinner where we meet my aunt and uncle there. South Side Bar-B-Que is really good and every time we go to her house we stop there for dinner. After dinner we went to the hotel and took a break from everything for a while before we went to the pool. Sunday was a travel day but before we hit the road we stop for breakfast with everyone. After breakfast we left and were on our way home. All of the photos and videos will be loaded sometime with in the next week to Flickr, YouTube and Facebook.

Memorial Day Climbing Weekend

These past two weeks have been super crazy with climbing and improvements all around. Saturday, the 26th, we went to the YMCA to climb there for about 3 hours. I warmed up by climbing a 5.9 lead and then worked my way up in to the higher grades. I pushed my self pretty hard but at the same time wanted to save myself alittle for Sunday. Sunday, we headed up to Governor Dodge State Park to climb at the Qual Wall. Sunday was about 92 degrees and humid. The only place that was alittle cooler was up against the rock under the overhang.We messed a little on determining which route was what but we figured it out. The Qual Wall was sandstone and I found it really hard to climb. I started off on a top rope route that was a 5.10 and it wasn't to bad. It was more under clingy than anything else. Nearing the top of the route there was a ledge that u had to walk up but it was just like a hill. The second route I did was a 5.10 sport route. The beginning of the route till the third draw was pretty easy then the moves between the 3rd and 5th bolts/ quick draws was pretty hard and it took a while to get to the 5th bolt. I came down after I clipped the the rope in because my arms were pumped. Kaz went after me on the same route and it took him 3 falls to get past the 5th quick draw then the top I guess was very easy. Kaz tried to set up another route that was a 5.12 but you were unable to get to it from the top section. This meant you have to sport climb the route in order to creat a toprope climb. The first 20 feet of the route were unprotected so he brought up a couple cams and nuts with him till he made his first bolt. He made it up to the 3rd bolt on the route which had 6 bolts on it. The day was really nice but it was hot and everyone there was tired and we decided to start packing up.  We got home about 9pm Sunday. Monday, we headed up to Jakes Rock in Halescorners. Jakes Rock is a bouldering rock that has some pretty hard problems on it along with some easier ones. I spent mojority of the time working on a problem that gave everyone a hard time. The problem was rated a V4-V5 about 20 minutes of working on the route I finally got it. Once I got it the route seemed to be a cakewalk after that. After That i found another problem that gave me a challenge so I worked on that was a while till about 2pm. My hands were torn up by that time so I decided that I was done climbing for the weekend. All of the photos from Governor Dodge State Park and Jakes Rock are posted to both my Flickr and Facebook account. Along with all videos from both climbing places.