Climbing Essay
Tristan Chen
“Wow look at that over twelve-thousand certified belayers.” I thought to myself heading up the steps of Caribeners for this year regional. As we walked in I noticed that you couldn’t see the top of the walls from the front desk, which amazed me, and how cool the walls looked with pillars that ended half way up and had a gap of about five feet with a stalactite that hung from the ceiling and was connected with a net, and nets that also hung from the ceiling. All of it was so amazing to see, but as soon as I my first look I had to go down the steps and around the corner through a cave and into iso. Iso itself was just a part of the bouldering area. To me this part was very sketchy because it was very low and had routes that go on the ceiling so it seemed more than likely that someone was going to get landed on.
Later on the sequencing part on the first climb in noticed that going up had at least five crosses over a crack that went the height of the climb. I also noticed that while the holds were good some of the reaches were going to be hard for me to reach. The second climb to me looked like it was a lot harder than the first one especially on the beginning when you’re holding two sloper's and have to cross over to the slab part and continue upwards. The final climb looked to be the hardest because there were many slopers and a lot of mantling.
“Oh dang it” I thought to myself as a was climbing the first of the three climbs about three-quarters of the way up realizing that I was a few inches away from reaching the next hold. “Maybe if I move over here. No” I thought starring at the crack right in front of my face that was off. “Well maybe if I just reach for it.” Thinking to myself while reaching upwards to grab the hold and walking my fingers up the hold to the part that’s best at the top. “Ya, Tristan!” came voices from the ground. Later, on the ground the belayer and judge told me that I was the second person to flirt with but not use the crack.
With the first climb successfully completed I moved on to the second climb, which proved to be harder than the first by quite a bit. The area that I had noticed earlier with slopers that crossed over onto the slab was one of the hardest moves in the three climbs, and I remember thinking to myself how hard it was hanging of two slopers with footholds that lacked goodness. Although I thought that after that move the rest of the route would be easy I was mistaken because the rest of the route was hard, it didn’t have any more good holds until the finish which was a very big reach, and this route to had many crosses over a pointed feature that was over hanging.
The third route was the one that I failed to complete because I was rushed and got just a little bit nervous. You see during the one-minute transition I was unable to finish tying in so when I started climbing I was rushed and although the beginning was I was getting a little bit nervous that I wouldn’t be able to finish the climb in time. So when I got to part that was just a little bit of a reach and I bumped my hand onto a different spot on the hold I lost my balance and fell off of the wall putting me in tenth place out of eleven and out of reach for divisionals.
Even though I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped I was still happy that I’d gone to regionals because later that day I went back and climb the third route with no falls, and I placed second in speed climbing. That’s what I love about climbing, even if you don’t succeed to do the thing that you were hoping to do you can still you back and redo it and prove to yourself that you’re able to do that thing.