ClimbingNarc.com » American Bouldering Series

2010 ABS 11 Nationals Adult Bouldering Championships Highlight Videos

Narc — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:57:50 +0000

Here are a couple of highlight videos from the recent 2010 ABS Nationals won by Alex Puccio and Daniel Woods:

Women’s Highlights

Men’s Highlights

2010 ABS 11 Nationals Adult Bouldering Championships Highlight Videos from ClimbingNarc.com

News & Notes – 2/23/2010

Narc — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:55:30 +0000

News…

Anthony Chertudi has done the FA of Spirit Walker, a potential V14 that links 2 of his previous FAs at the 27th St. Boulders in Ogden, UT. Click here to see video of Chertudi doing the 2nd ascent of The Masterpiece (V13) in Joe’s Valley.
Sean McColl and Ethan Pringle both nabbed repeats of the Bishop highball Evilution Direct (V11). McColl sent the line ground up while Pringle worked it on a rope first. It’s worth noting that Pringle is still recovering from a debilitating shoulder injury suffered at last year’s ABS Nationals. Seems like things are going pretty well thus far.
Jon Glassberg recently completed his long battle with Dark Waters (V12/13ish) in Clear Creek Canyon, CO. First done way back in 2006 by Daniel Woods, the grade of Dark Waters has always been good fodder for a debate about grades. Check out Glassberg’s blog post for another good addition to the discussion.

Dark Waters (V13) from Jon Glassberg on Vimeo.

…And Notes…

Formerly the Mammut Bouldering Championships, the newly minted Unified Bouldering Championships Pro Tour kicks off in Maryland on April 23 & 24 at the Earth Treks Roc Comp presented by Mountain Hardwear. Already scheduled to appear at the comp to compete for an $11,000 cash purse are the likes of Lisa Rands, Paul Robinson and some guy named Chris Sharma. Read the tour launch press release here.
Issue 9 of Deadpoint Magazine is now available
There’s been a bit of a shake up at the magazines published by Skram Media. With the departure of Matt Samet from Climbing Magazine, Urban Climber’s Editor in Chief Justin Roth has been promoted to Editorial Director of all 3 Skram Media brands.
Part 1 of Peter Beal’s interview series with former Climbing Magazine Editor in Chief Matt Samet
Urban Climber Magazine interviews 2009 Triple Crown winner Kasia Pietras
To put a cap on last week’s post about the 2010 ABS Nationals is this excellent write up from Rock & Ice and this gallery of images from Steve Woods
Jamie Emerson poses several interesting questions with regards to women and the world of high-end climbing
Episode 6 of The Season is now up on the Arc’Teryx website. This episode offers the first look at climber Matt Maddaloni and his “anti-cam” (shown above).
Pump Factory Road has the transcript from a recent edition of Climb Talk Radio with guidebook authors and first ascenionists Jason Haas and Tom Hanson. Several interesting quotes including this one from Haas:

But, I’ve been climbing a lot in the South Platte lately, and replacing some bolts down there and working on a guidebook for there. And talking to some of the old first ascensionists, they kind of regret their run-out routes, because people aren’t repeating them. Looking back on that, 20/30 years later, [they] really wish that they had done them in a different style. So, I think there’s something to be said for that, of looking back on your routes.

and this one from Hanson about everyone’s Sock Hands’ favorite chosspile, Castlewood Canyon:

Well, I think a lot of the rock has really cleaned up, so there’s not so much loose climbing anymore. I really think of Castlewood as a winter climbing area. It has one of the warmest climates on this side of Shelf Road, which is considered Colorado’s “banana belt.” Castlewood can often be the same way. But, in the summertime you really have to be aware of rattlesnakes. One day in particular, we encountered 28 rattlesnakes in one day. The place can really be infested in the warm summer months

Rock breaks, even on famous V13 super highballs. Be careful out there!
Via TheLowDown is this Kairn.com interview with the Huber Brothers:

Oh and I forgot to mention that this site is 3 years old as of last Saturday. Thanks to everyone for reading!

News & Notes – 2/23/2010 from ClimbingNarc.com

2010 ABS 11 Nationals Adult Bouldering Championships Final Results & Video

Narc — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:38:47 +0000

Finals for the 11th edition of ABS Nationals went down Saturday night in Alexandria, VA and it sounded like quite the show. Daniel Woods topped a strong men’s field and Alex Puccio edged out Alex Johnson (again) with some surprises following them on the podium, especially on the Men’s side of the ledger. Here are the top 5 finishers:

Men’s Results

Women’s Results

Daniel Woods
Matt Bosley
Robert D’Anastasio
Zach Lerner
Magnus Midtbø

Full Men’s results

Alex Puccio
Alexandra Johnson
Francesca Metcalf
Sasha DiGiulian
Sierra Blair-Coyle

Full Women’s Results

Complete records are hard to come by but I believe this was Woods’ 3rd win in the past 4 years while Puccio has won 4 out of the past 5 years losing a close battle with Alex Johnson last year.

Of course, if you weren’t in the gym you really had no way of seeing the action unfold which is unfortunate in my opinion. Jamie Emerson tried his best to keep us posted via his twitter feed but he reached Twitter’s limit right as the heavy hitters were starting to climb. Garrett Gregor was also at the comp posting videos to twitter via his cell phone which was certainly better than nothing. Hopefully this will be the last year without some sort of live stream.

For pictures of Finals you can check out Ben Carlson’s site.

Report from routesetter Chris Danielson

Excellent pictures from Caroline Treadway. Part 1. Part 2.

Good discussion about the comp scene in posts on B3Bouldering here and here.

Gabor Szekely’s thoughts from a competitor’s perspective

I’ll update this post as more media becomes available.

Here are 4 videos of Daniel Woods:

Daniel Woods completes problem 1 of ABS Bouldering National Championships from Lu on Vimeo.

Daniel Woods completes problem 2 at ABS National Bouldering Championships from Lu on Vimeo.

Daniel Woods completes problem 3 at ABS National Bouldering Championships from Lu on Vimeo.

To be clear, this last video was taken after the comp. Thanks to B3 for clarifying.

Daniel Woods, final problem. Wins ABS National Bouldering Championship from Lu on Vimeo.

2010 ABS 11 Nationals Adult Bouldering Championships Final Results & Video from ClimbingNarc.com

2010 ABS 11 Nationals Adult Qualifiers Results & Videos

Narc — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:08:10 +0000

ABS Nationals is in full swing now in Alexandria, VA, and despite concerns about the weather it looks like most of the competitors were able to make it for the Open qualifying round yesterday. Jamie Emerson was on hand tweeting live updates which he promises to do once again this evening for the Open finals beginning some time around 7:30 PM EST. Until USA Climbing finally does something like ne2c did this past summer with the Mammut Bouldering Championships this is probably the best option for live “coverage” of the comp.

Here are the climbers who qualified for finals tonight:

Men’s Qualifying Results

Women’s Qualifying Results

Paul Robinson
Vasya Vorotnikov
Daniel Woods
Magnus Midtbø
Jimmy Webb
Robert D’Anastasio
Julian Bautista
Carlo Traversi
Gabor Szekely
Adam Markert
Matt Bosley
Alex Johnson
Paul Wallace
Joshua Levin
Kyle Owen
Eric Paulsen (No Finals)
Zach Lerner
Ryan Olson

Full Men’s results

Alex Puccio
Audrey Gawrych
Elizabeth Asher
Alexandra Johnson
Sierra Blair-Coyle
Francesca Metcalf
Sasha Digiulian
Kate McGinnis
Cicada Jenerik
Isabelle Faus
Chauncenia Cox
Michaela Kiersch
Taylor Clarkin
Audrey Sniezek
Amy Lipschultz

Full Women’s Results

On the media front, Jamie has a few pictures from the Women’s qualifying round up on his site and Ben Carlson has some images from the youth comp going up on his site.

Here are a few videos that made their way online, if you see any others feel free to share them in the comments.

Paul Robinson on Men’s #5

Alex Puccio on Women’s #6

Jimmy Webb on 3 of the qualifying problems

2010 ABS Qualifiers from Jimmy Webb on Vimeo.

2010 ABS 11 Nationals Adult Qualifiers Results & Videos from ClimbingNarc.com

News & Notes – 02/10/2010

Narc — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:33:55 +0000

It’s been a bit of a slow news year month week so there’s not much to report of late. ABS Nationals, probably the biggest and most important indoor bouldering comp of the year, will be taking place this weekend in Alexandria, VA. Results of the comp are used to determine the U.S. National team for World Cup events like the one being held this June at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, CO. The running orders listed on the ABS website show that it should be a pretty stacked field as usual. Hopefully the recent snowpocalypse won’t have a negative impact on people’s ability to make it to the comp.

On the subject of comps like ABS Nationals, I’m still continually amazed at the number of people that compete given the cost. Even though Nationals is often in Boulder, many of the competitors have to fly across the country, find lodging and pay over $100 to USA Climbing to compete in the event. All of this to most likely climb for 20 minutes. It’s not something I would ever do, but then again I pretty much blew out my shoulder just thinking about trying some of the problems from last year’s comp so what do I know.

With that rant over, here are a few news/links worth noting:

Best of luck to Kelly Cordes as he recovers from a rather horrendous sounding injury to his leg.
On her first trip to Hueco Tanks Alex Johnson made quick work of Diaphanous Sea (V12ish) and Power Of Silence (V10).
Also in Hueco, Kensuke Hamada repeated Fred Nicole’s Martini Roof testpiece Esperanza (V14). By my very unofficial count this is the problem’s 12th ascent.
Blake Rutherford recently established a new V12 called The Godzilla Indirect Sit Start at Arthur’s Rock near Fort Collins, CO. Check out Firetherig.com for pictures.
Dave MacLeod’s new book 9 out of 10 make the same mistakes sounds like a pretty interesting read based on these reviews from Mountains & Water and TheLowDown.
TheLowDown interviews Iker Pou after his 2nd ascent of Demencia Senil (5.15a) in Margalef, Spain
Five Ten has a nicely redesigned website
The Access Fund announces their 2009 Sharp End Award recipients
Pretty excellent (and long) documentary about famed climber Reinhold Messner
Whiskey!

News & Notes – 02/10/2010 from ClimbingNarc.com

2009 ABS 10 Nationals Adult Finals Wrap Up

Narc — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:30:08 +0000

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Colorado was being on hand to watch the Adult Open Finals on Saturday night. Last year’s show was pretty good, but I think that the 2009 edition of Adult Finals was even better. The Spot was packed with energy, but not overly packed with people like last year. To me the show came off tighter and faster than in 2008, with very few lags in the action.

As the dust settles after a big comp like ABS Nationals, it is always interesting to see how the climbers themselves felt about the comp. Given the increasing number of climber blogs, this is easier to do than ever.

Athlete Thoughts

One of the main topics of discussion has been the scoring system. For an explanation of how it works, see my post from Monday. As far as the athletes are concerned, the response to the system is decidedly mixed. On the one hand you have Jon Glassberg who found the system to be “absolutely terrible” while on the other hand you have Sean McColl who loves the ISFC format. At this point it seems unlikely that the system will be changing any time soon so the athletes are going to have to learn to adapt.

And what about those injured climbers? Some of the athletes came into the comp banged up and unfortunately at least one left with a serious injury. The most well known of the pre-comp injuries was, of course, Paul Robinson’s broken ankle he suffered back in October. Despite not doing much climbing these past 4 months and not being 100% confident in his ability to fall without reinjuring himself, Paul placed a very solid 2nd. You can read more from Paul on his new Deadpoint Mag blog as well.

There was also the little issue of Daniel Woods having a large boulder fall on his arm earlier in the week while climbing at Carter Lake. Like any good rumor the size of the boulder ranged from 300 lbs to 800 lbs in the different stories I heard, but I think it’s safe to assume it didn’t feel all that great no matter what the size. Woods is either a fast healer, a total beast or likely a combination of the two as he crushed all 8 problems (qualifiers + finals) at the comp in 9 total tries. Man’s Game!

Unfortunately, a couple of climbers left the comp less healthy than when they arrived. Ethan Pringle looked like he suffered a pretty painful shoulder injury while attempting the “rose move dyno” on Men’s #4. He is in the process of having the injury evaluated, but it looked pretty serious at the time. The other injury of note that happened during the comp was that of Laura Griffiths. She was unable to finish competing after she injured her ankle on a fall from Women’s #1. She tried to suck it up but had to throw in the towel while attempting Women’s #2. I’d like to wish a speedy recovery to both!

Finally, there is the view of the comp from the vantage point of the routesetters. As usual, Jamie Emerson has that angle covered. From a spectators point of view I agree with him that the setting worked out really well. For the men, I’m not sure you could have asked for much more. The last problem had flare and its sole flash came from one of the last competitors (Daniel Woods) to seal the victory. On the women’s side of things the problems were a tad too difficult, and due to the scoring system there wasn’t as much of a clear separation as there was for the men. It was still pretty entertaining though.

For additional thoughts on the routesetting as well as thoughts from several of the athletes, check out the Five Ten blog.

Media

If you weren’t at the comp and are wondering what things looked like, don’t fret. There are almost as many people taking pictures or videos at these comps as there are people competing. Here are a few of the places to take in more visual stimulation from ABS 10 Adult Finals:

Wade David has the photos covered
Kelly McBride also has some nice photos from qualifiers and finals
MomentumVM has footage up right now of Men’s and Women’s Finals problem #4 with more to come
Deadpoint Magazine has a good write-up of the event along with some Wade David photos.
AllClimbing has some behind the scenes photos from Day 1

I’ll update this list as I find more places with pictures or video. If you know of some, feel free to pimp them in the comments.

2009 ABS 10 Nationals Adult Finals Wrap Up from ClimbingNarc.com

2009 ABS 10 Nationals Adult Bouldering Championships Results

Narc — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 04:37:41 +0000

More when we get home, but in the meantime here are your ABS 10 Adult National Bouldering Championship results:

Mens

Daniel Woods
Paul Robinson
Sean McColl

Womens

Alex Johnson
Chauncenia Cox
Alex Puccio

Full Men’s Results

Full Women’s Results

A pretty impressive and dominating performance on the part of Daniel Woods made for a really exciting event. More to come…

Update: Since I posted the final results from the USA Climbing website it might be helpful for people if I (try to) explain the scoring system used. The basic explanation of the scoring system is that there are only two holds that count on each of the 4 finals problems. There is a so-called Zone or Bonus hold and the finish hold. The bonus hold is a semi-random hold, usually toward the top of the problem. Climbers get credit for controlling the bonus hold and the finish hold. The other holds literally count for nothing. Several climbers climbed from the bonus hold to within inches of the finish hold, but they get the same credit as someone who fell off the bonus hold. Likewise, many climbers climbed several moves on a problem and fell before controlling the bonus hold which means they are scored as if they basically never left the ground.

To best understand the results on the USA Climbing website, I would recommend just reading the columns on the left where it lists the total tops and total bonuses for each climber. For example, you can see that Daniel Woods got all 4 bonus holds as well as all 4 finishes in an impressive 5 total attempts. Right behind him, Paul Robinson got all 4 bonus holds but only 3 finishes. It’s pretty easy to see why they finished first and second. After that it gets a bit confusing. The way the final scoring is done is that climbers are ranked first by # of problems they top out, then by # of attempts to top out, then by # of bonus holds followed by # of attempts to reach a bonus hold. This is how Julian Bautista, an impressive young climber who topped out 2 problems and got 2 bonus holds, finished ahead of other climbers that topped out 2 problems AND controlled 4 bonus holds. He took fewer attempts on the problems he topped out which trumped the fact that other climbers with the same number of topouts controlled more bonus holds. Confusing, I know.

Needless to say, this system is fairly controversial among the climbers, but it is the way things are done in Europe so we will probably have to get used to it for the time being.

Update #2: It should also be noted that only the top 3 finishers received prize money. Payouts were as follows for both the men and women: 1st place – $1250, 2nd place $750, 3rd place $500. Not exactly like winning the U.S. Open or anything…

2009 ABS 10 Nationals Adult Bouldering Championships Results from ClimbingNarc.com

News & Notes – 2/21/08

Narc — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:10:31 +0000

Matt Birch recently repeated The Mandala Sit Start (V14) at the Buttermilks outside of Bishop, CA. By my count this is the problem’s 7th ascent.
Wade David has photos posted from both qualifying and finals of the Adult ABS Nationals comp. That was a pretty sick lense he was rocking on Saturday night!
Dave Graham has added 2 more V13′s to the woods of Arkansas: Wood Grain Grippin’ and Chunk up the Deuce. He had this to say about the latter problem, “the worlds mage wind guided me through the endless open oceans of blocs, and led me to this one”. Very reminiscent of his interview this summer.
Jody Hansen has added her name to the very short list of women to have climbed a confirmed V12 when she did Rumble in the Jungle at Hueco Tanks, TX this week. It can’t be long before women are climbing V13 can it?? Of course Rumble was made famous by Chris Sharma in the film Free Hueco when he very eloquently described it as, “There’s…um…this roof…um…Rumble in the Jungle…um” or something like that.
I couldn’t possibly recap all that was featured, but Justin Jaeger has been unloading his old pictures onto his blogsite this week. My personal favorite was the post on his send of Super Gui (NOT V7) at Mt. Evans. Nice work sir! That problem looks so good.
While he waits for Suspension of Disbelief to thaw out, Paul Robinson added a new moderate classic to Eldorado Canyon when he did the FA of Resonated (V9). Now if only they would use the increased user fee this year to improve that road into Eldo!

Paul Robinson on the FA of Resonated (V9) in Eldorado Canyon, CO

Photo: Andy Mann

Routesetter.com has a great recap of the entire ABS Nationals weekend from the routesetter’s perspective. I raised a question in the comments about one of the problems at the comp having a jump start that seemed to stymie the shorter climbers. Be sure to check it out for head youth setter Molly Beard’s response which I think makes sense even if I don’t really count jump starting as much of a climbing skill. I also think that climbingnarc.com needs some sweet shirts like Routesetter.com’s Mike Helt was wearing at Nationals this weekend…
MomentumVM has a video up of the Adult Open finals from Saturday night. I don’t think I saw very much footage of the top women though?
MoDump has video of Aaron Reynolds climbing the SoIll classic Body Karate (V9)
Mrs. Narc has a question she would like some help answering…
Keep up the support!

News & Notes – 2/21/08 from ClimbingNarc.com

2008 ABS 9 Nationals Results

Narc — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:54:23 +0000

We are unfortunately back in the never ending arctic winter of Wisconsin. The weekend at ABS Nationals in Boulder was amazing to say the least. Our computer is in need of a new video card so it will be a few days until I have a chance to go through all the pictures from the weekend. I will have a more thorough write-up at that point, but until then here is a very brief re-cap of the Adult finals on Saturday night:

It was very cool to see one of my predictions come true when Paul Robinson won for the men. Despite not seeming at his strongest Paul still managed to top a strong field that included crowd favorite Chris Sharma and Canadian Sean McColl. Notable performances were also turned in by Mark Hobson, Tyler Haack and Ryan Olson who had highpoint on Men’s # 4.

Unfortunately my other prediction for Lisa Rands to win for the Women did not come to fruition as she couldn’t put it together on Women’s # 4 and came in 6th place. Alex Puccio eked out a victory over Alex Johnson by the slimmest of margins despite only finishing two of the problems (compared to Johnson’s 3).

Paul Robinson – ABS 9 National Champion

ABS 9 Nationals Male Open

Paul Robinson
Chris Sharma
Sean McColl
Mark Hobson
Tyler Haack

ABS 9 Nationals Female Open

Alex Puccio
Alexandra Johnson
Paige Claassen
Elizabeth Asher
Tiffany Hensley

You can see full results for both Adult and Youth competitors by clicking here.

2008 ABS 9 Nationals Results from ClimbingNarc.com

ABS Nationals: Boulder Bound

Narc — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:53:19 +0000

Barring any weather related delays we will be on a plane heading to Denver/Boulder later this evening. Friday will be a day of exploration with the weekend dedicated to coaching and spectating at the various comps taking place.

Needless to say, we are really psyched for the Open Finals on Saturday night that will feature Chris Sharma and Paul Robinson for the men and a seriously stout women’s field featuring Rands, Puccio, Johnson, Payne, Classen and Harrington among others. I suspect there will also be several other big names in the men’s field before it is all said and done.

Talk about a tough field to handicap though. Sharma and Alex Johnson won this summer in Salt Lake despite not having much presence at other comps while Paul and Alex Puccio won the Mammut/EMS bouldering series. I think that Paul might be ready to take his game to the next level and dethrone Sharma, and for the women I like Lisa Rands to win. Of course this will be the highest pressure American bouldering comp ever as the results on Saturday night help to determine who will represent the USA in the upcoming Bouldering World Cup so anything can happen. It should be exciting to see how it all unfolds.

Here is a link to the open running order if you want to see who will be there.

Here is the running order for the kids on Saturday.

Good luck to our kids that are competing !

I might try to update this weekend, but I have my doubts as our laptop is THE suck!

Here is some info on getting tickets for the open finals this weekend as well:

Pre-sale spectator tickets through the ABS are sold out.
The Spot is selling 300 tickets starting Wednesday at 3pm if you’re a current paying Spot member. Call to order.
Friday at 11am the Spot is selling the remaining tickets from the 300 to whoever gets them first. Call to order.
Saturday there are 100 more tickets on sale, starting at 5pm. First come first serve or by phone.

Spot Phone: 303.379.8806

ABS Nationals: Boulder Bound from ClimbingNarc.com

ABS Regionals

Narc — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:05:25 +0000

We are back from Cincinnati and the ABS Midwest Regionals competition. Overall the comp was a very good experience, and we had 4 kids qualify for Nationals at the Spot which was very exciting. The comp itself was very well run, and for the most part the problems looked really fun. It is looking like we will be heading out to Boulder next month!

Here are a few other random observations:

Props to regular climbingnarc readers Tony and Sarah for being 2 of the kids to qualify. Way to do us a solid.
A ton of kids these days are wearing Evolv shoes and the La Sport Solutions. There are not many wearing Five Ten.
Standing around a gym inhaling chalk dust and spectating for 10 hours is in many ways more physically taxing than climbing in the comp itself.
The host gym, Climb Time of Blue Ash, is a really cool bouldering facility. All the tall steep walls really made me wish I could have climbed. It is easy to see how climbers like Grady Bagwell have gotten so strong climbing there.
With the exception of the problems for the 11 & under kids, the climbing seemed to be hard but fair for everyone. The ones for the smallest kids seemed a bit on the hard side too close to the ground. Of course, setting boulder problems for kids under 11 is also one of the hardest groups to set for so that wasn’t all that surprising.
Having a second, bigger comp on the same day was a really cool idea to give the kids more climbing.
Taking pictures in a climbing gym using only the built-in flash is really, really hard.
The atmosphere at this comp was much more relaxed than other USA Climbing comps in recent memory, and there were fewer of the overbearing parent types that were more prevalent at other comps. If you were there, the reason was clear.

ABS Regionals from ClimbingNarc.com

Bouldering World Cup Coming to U.S.

Narc — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:01:49 +0000

Via B3Bouldering, we have news that a World Cup event will be held on U.S. soil for the first time in almost 20 years. It was announced yesterday that there will be a Bouldering World Cup event at the 2008 Teva Mountain Games June 4-8 in Vail, CO. More information on the event as well as information on how to qualify can be found at the USA Climbing website. It looks like the ABS Nationals coming up in February just became a whole lot more important.

Bouldering World Cup Coming to U.S. from ClimbingNarc.com

ABS 9 Adventure Rock Wrap Up

Narc — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:36:41 +0000

This past Saturday we held our first bouldering comp at Adventure Rock since the epic Booldering comp held in October of 2000. This time it was a local comp for the ABS 9 series. Ever the pessimist, I had a somewhat gloomy outlook about how we would fit the throngs of climbers into our small caves. I was also concerned that we wouldn’t be able to set enough hard problems to keep the strong climbers interested. As is usually the case, I was wrong on both fronts.

By all accounts the comp was a success. The crowd was a manageable 55 climbers and despite a higher than expected turnout for the open division, there were plenty of quality hard problems for them to throw themselves at.

Click here to see the full results.

Here is a rundown of a few of the different division winners that I have pictures of:

Male Junior and Overall winner Kelsen Alexander

Male Open winner David Nimmer (2nd overall)

Male Masters winner Mark Nimmer

Male Youth C winner Andrew Nimmer

Male Youth B winner Michael O’Rourke

Male Youth A winner Alex Johnson (3rd overall)

and last but certainly not least, Women’s Intermediate winner Amy Unti-Runnells (#1 in my book)

ABS 9 Adventure Rock Wrap Up from ClimbingNarc.com

ABS 9 Photos

Narc — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:28:58 +0000

I put together a quick page of photos from yesterday’s ABS 9 comp at Adventure Rock. Check it out by clicking here.

ABS 9 Photos from ClimbingNarc.com

ABS 9

Narc — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:37:16 +0000

The upcoming season of ABS bouldering comps is rapidly approaching. If you are anywhere in the Midwest you should come check out the new bouldering cave at Adventure Rock during their ABS comp October 6th. If I am not mistaken, registration begins around 10 and climbing is scheduled to last around 3-3.5 hours.

Here are a few pictures I took in haste this weekend to give you a sense of what the new cave looks like. As you can see the lighting is not ideal but the climbing is. Props to Eric Holiday for turning a small closet into a huge bouldering area. More pictures to come after the comp this weekend.

ABS 9 from ClimbingNarc.com

2007 ABS Nationals Results

Narc — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:10:00 +0000

Here are the results from the ABS National Bouldering Competition held Feb 16-17 in Maryland.

Men
1 Daniel Woods 4400.00
2 Paul Robinson 4400.00
3 Sean McColl 4400.00

Women
1 Alex Puccio 4400.00
2 Elizabeth Asher 4400.00
3 Angela Payne 4400.00

Click here to listen to audio commentary of finals courtesy of Podclimber.com

My reaction? Top 8 women and top 4 men sent all of the finals problems and the general consensus was the problems were far too easy. Seems like the route setters did not have a very good sense of just how sick strong today’s top climbers are.

Props to Kasia Pietras for a very strong showing in 4th place, just missing the podium!

2007 ABS Nationals Results from ClimbingNarc.com