Climbing Competition

[Terry]

A friend asked me to help her with a climbing competition this weekend. The only problem was the wall at the Y is small - less than the width of handball court. To make up for the lack of routes we made it more interesting. We broke it up into the approach (timed, aerobic events) and climbing.

The approach consisted of 1/2 mile on a treadmill set at 15%, 25 floors on a Stairmaster (the kind with escalator-type stairs) and 250 feet on a versaclimber. Each participant controled the speed. I planned on 1,000 feet on versaclimber but reduced it when it looked like the first particpant was going to need CPR. Total time was factored into the points they got from climbing. After the approach they did as many pullups as they could (tie-breaker).

Climbing routes were probably in 5.7 to 5.10a range. Given the size of the wall we gave each participant 15 minutes to do the six routes. One guy managed to do five of them. There weren't any breaks between events, so most folks were not too fresh when they hit the wall. They also had no idea what we had in store for them. It was fun but would have been better if I had been allowed to hide at the top of the wall and drop small rocks, ice cubes and water down on the contestants.