Yank-N-Yard 2012 Video

Here is a nice video of the 2012 Yank-N-Yard that Andy Burr put together. Prepping the gym, setting and forerunning the problems consumed a week of my life. All in all, it was a good time.

Yank-N-Yard 2012

Coming back from CA

As many of you know, my parents home got burned in January 2011. They finally got trusses put up and it is almost dried in, only took 15 months.

 I'm always impressed with the food in the Oakland airport. Tasty tacos from near gate 29?, I think.

 On Friday we had a Stone Cup competition in the evening. Linda was climbing and I was working so Dylan hung out with the gyms C-team as they were out slack lining in front go the gym.

 The next day we ran a USA Climbing SCS competition. Here Curran gives the competitor intro.

Dylan also had testing for his orange belt. He did not behave during most of it and refused to pay attention, so he did not get to upgrade, he will get another chance though this week, I think. Here though he gets to "fight" off Sensei Anna.

The laughing is because Anna had told the kids to punch her just above her belt and of course Dylan goes for the middle of the chest the first time.

SnowDown at the Rock Lounge

Sometime near the end of last year I got a call from a old college friend, Chris Barlow. I had set the a couple of of the Colorado College competitions several years back, he won the first one and worked with me on the second. He is now living in Durango, CO working at a boarding school there and doing some route setting at the local gym, The Rock Lounge. They were going to have a competition at the beginning of February for an annual Durango event known as the Snowdown (basically when everyone is sick of the snow) and was wondering if I could help set the event. Well I'm not one to turn down an opportunity for work, visiting old friends and possibly snowboarding so I agreed.

The gym is quite nice for how small a community it serves. You enter on the middle floor of 3 and overlook the downstairs area which is for routes. Here are some people during the competition.

 The left wall is pretty steep in the upper half and reasonably tall, maybe 30 feet. Interestingly you can see windows in the wall that you can still bolt holds to, there are more like this half way up the lead wall on the left as well.

Upstairs is a very steep cave which is nice to set in since you never need a ladder. The roof is a little on the low side though I never felt like I really had to suck my feet up to avoid them hitting the ground when I swung. So while I'm not a big fan of horizontal climbing it is a good use of the space for them and about as good as it gets for setting.

 On the main floor there is what amounts to a very short lead wall or very tall bouldering wall. Since this was a bouldering competition we obviously used the wall to set problems. Here are a couple of guys climbing for the peanut gallery.

All in all, I think the competition was a success, they had about 60 competitors, which for such a small facility seemed like a lot. People seemed to be having a good time when I left about half way through the event to make the drive back to Albuquerque. 

I had a good time setting there and working with their group of setters, and hope to be back soon.

On another note, I did get in a day on the slopes at Durango Mountain Resort (Purgatory). A family that parked next to me in the lot was nice enough to get me a discount with their season pass, friends of pass holders got a discounted rate, Thanks Adam.