The Rendezvous

FINALLY SOME CLIMBING!
And a whole lot of it...


Last Saturday Kyle, Ben, Spook and I headed out to some place in Western Mass for the WESTERN MASS CLIMBERS COALITION RENDEZVOUS THING (see below). Because no one in our group had never heard of the place all of our expectations were deteremined by two blurry shots on the new england bouldering website and a flier that ensured a bouldering competition.

After two weeks without climbing, this amount of information was enough to keep me psyched for days.

Finally, it was that brisk and beautiful Saturday morning, and off we went to Wendell State Forest. The very first thing we encountered when we arrived must have been foreshadowing to the strange form of climbing we were going to be doing during the rest of the day. We pulled up, and there to great us was a 180 pound Great Dane. This beast came up to my elbows when standing on all fours. and on two feet it was probably taller than me. To sum it up, this animal (more horse than dog) was named bob.

Now you may wonder what was so strange about this day. Why was it not like any other outdoor climbing festival? Well, the answer can be summed up more by a grade than a word or a sentence... V0. That's right, the mother of all moderates.

Let me put this in perspective for you. You set 109 problems for a competition. 80% of those problems are below V2. The only logical way to make a competition work? Quantity over quality my friends. Each problem, regardless of grade, was worth 2 points. Lets get started.

After warming up on several (about 25) moderates from VFun to V3, we reached a very notable problem called B Roof - V5. This sick line came out a low roof (lay down start) and had a wide variety of climbing to a crux top-out. Check the Pics below.

Burl.

You see where his feet are? thats where the problem starts... Yeah...

CRUX TOP-OUT EPICNESS!!!!

We then hit up some more moderates. We met up with a kid named Keagan we had climbed with at comps and he, Ben and I sunk into a unique climbing mindset in which climbing in our hiking shoes and packs without a pad became acceptable. Polishing off moderates left and right, our points climbed higher and higher until we reached another notable problem called Birds Nest - V4. This SICK line climbs out a small roof, through a beastly throw off a crimp to a crux last move. That last move had me shut down for a good ten tries until I sent. Yay.

We moved towards the final area and after doing a few cool slab problems, Ben and I sunk back into our speed climbing mindset. We were litterally sprinting from problem to problem in our climbing shoes (an act that would later leave me unable to touch my beet-red toes the next day), sending everything we could.

There were a few cool climbs along the way, but there was no time to stop and marvel at them, hurry, run to the downclimb and hop on something else! I swear the sun is getting lower.

This mindset carried us all the way till the end of the comp.

The tally?
Ben climbed 68 problems for a total of 136
I climbed 60 problems for a total of 120
The rest of the crew (FOOLS) were more focused on the quality climbing.
Psh... they have no clue.

Ben got pity third behind a ton of uber strong people and the next day I was more sore than I have ever been ever.
-WB