ISA Climbing Competition

The second ever ISA climbing competition was held in Worcester, at the Red Point climbing wall. It was a fairly big wall, with very high lead and top rope walls, a fairly large boulder wall that featured lots of variation like overhangs, slabs and more.

Me and Ruari got to the wall at about 9am, leaving plenty of time to warm up before the 10am start. We were in the advanced category, meaning that we did lead climbs instead of top rope. The leads weren’t challenging, however a very hard 4th lead proved to be very difficult. I topped two of the leads, missing out on a 3rd top by making a silly mistake near the top. Overall, I scored 360 out of 400, coming 4th out of around 150 climbers, and Ruari scored 320, coming 5th.

After a short break and some food, we headed for the boulders. There were eight boulders, and the comp was structured so that you got four attempts on each problem. A flash was worth five points, 2nd attempt was four points, 3rd attempt three points and 4th attempt two points, after that you couldn’t collect any points. Unlike other comps I have been to there were no zone holds, meaning that you could not collect easy points to boost your overall position. I flashed one problem and topped a second on the second attempt and Ruari unfortunately didn’t top any, the boulders were very hard and looking at other people’s scorecards not many people topped more than three. After we tried all the problems in the advanced we went onto the beginner and intermediate problems to see what they were like and feel a bit better.

Overall it was a great experience for me, and Ruari will agree, it was great to represent the school in climbing, a sport that is much under looked. I hope to represent the School and myself in more competitions in the future.

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