Yearly Archives: 2009

End of Summer

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I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post and I apologise. The bottom line is, ever since we lost both our laptops, I’ve kind of fallen off the grid. I would go days and sometimes a whole week without checking my facebook page as well as my email. Whenever I did manage to find a free place to access internet, there was almost always a line up and writing a blog post just wasn’t one of my highest priorities. For the most part, I was getting ready to come home.

I left off just after the World Cup in Barcelona and I’ll kind of sum up the past month of my life. After Barcelona, Jamie Chong, Sarah Austin and I headed to Rodellar for a very quick trip. We climbed for two days and on the third day we drove back to Barcelona to pick up Mathilde Becerra. Since it was Mathilde’s 18th birthday on August 14, we went out for dinner and tried to show her a good time. After that, Jamie and Sarah went north and Mathilde and I went back to Rodellar. Jamie and Sarah took a train and eventually rented a car to head over to Italy and visit Pisa and Rome and then drive back up to Paris for a week. Along the way, they stopped in Torino and visited Lorenzo who is a climber that was training in Vancouver for a while. Mathilde and I went to Rodellar for 4-5 climbing days. While we were there, Mathilde redpointed her first 8a and I onsighted my first 8b! After Rodellar, we had planned to drive up to Imst. Since Mathilde’s passport was stolen, she couldn’t cross through Switzerland and had to stay behind. I made the 12 hour drive from Toulouse-Imst by myself alone in my car. I stopped once after 6 hours of driving for a quick 15 minute break to fill up for gas and check my oil. After another 6 hours, I arrived back at Jorg’s house in Innsbruck and started getting psyched for the comp. If you don’t already know, I managed to make finals and once again make it onto the podium at a lead World Cup. It’s only the second time I’ve been on the podium for lead and the first time was at the exact same competition one year ago.

After Imst, I drove to Lyon to meet up with the Canadian Junior National Team. Junior World Championships were held on August 27-30 and we were in Lyon a few days before the competition to get the team together before the competition. The day before I got there, the team went to a big garden that was filled with activities and the day I got there, we went to one of the climbing gyms to train before the competition. A couple of days before the competition, we headed to Valence and checked into our new hotel. The day before the competition, we wanted to keep everyone pretty mellow so we went on a short hike to a really cool castle close to Valence and at night, the whole team participated in a 3 table poker tournament. Junior Worlds was a lot different this year in relation to other years. This was the first year that I’ve gone to Junior Worlds as a coach and I think being there as a coach makes you look at the competition a different way. After the first two days of qualifyers, only one climber advanced to semis, Elise Sethna. She competed on the 3rd day and placed a very respectable 20th. I saw that a lot of the climbers were dissapointed with their results and I think that some climbers have unrealistic goals. Because I’ve been in Europe for the past 3-4 years for the 3 months of summer I know how hard climbers have to climb to make every round during worlds. In reality, for the Junior Boys category, if you’re not onsighting 5.12c on a regular basic, you’re not going to make semis. To make finals, you have to be onsighting 5.13a. If our climbers know how hard they have to climb to make semis and they know they’re not at that level, they should be training harder. To make semi finals at the World Championships is already an accomplishment for climbers coming from North America. Our sport is still growing and hopefully will continue to grow in the coming years.

Another thing that bugged me about being at Worlds as a coach is the amount of stress that the parents can put on their kids. I found that some of the parents weren’t happy just sitting in a group watching the competition. Instead, they would try and talk to the kids and eventually just make them more nervous. It’s hard to tell a parent that they’re not helping their kid by talking to them but in some circumstances I wanted to. Like I said before, it was quite different to be a coach at Junior Worlds than a competitor. Before I start ranting about nothing, I’ll get back to my trip.

After Junior World Championships I left my car at the Valence train station and went back to Toulouse with Mathilde. I stayed at her house for about half a week before I started making my way back home. After a 3.5 hour train ride turned into a 7 hour train ride because of a problem in Nimes, I was once again back in Valence. I drove 2.5 hours to the French/Swiss border and after a pretty sketchy encounter with the border patrol, I was back in Switzerland. I visited my friend Christina Schmid in Bern for a few hours then made it back to Basel. My friends Omar Momente and Diana Piazon live in Basel and it’s actually Omar who owns and insures the car that I drive around. I had planned on staying longer with them but because of the mis hap with the trains, I only got to spend one night with them. After 3 plane rides, 4 cokes and a lot of airplane food, I was back in the Vancouver airport, where I had started 4.5 months ago. My trip was finally over and it was one for the memory books. This year, I had surpassed all my goals and had the best summer of my life. Hopefully next summer I’ll be able to do the same thing…

Ups and Downs

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About two weeks ago, Jamie Chong and Sarah Austin joined me in my European adventures. I picked them up from the Nice airport and we stayed there for a couple of nights. The beach in Nice is borderline perfect. It is about 3km of beachfront with the perfect blue-turquoise water. The temperature was hovering around 30 degrees for the whole day. After nice, we went to the Tout A Bloc competition. Last year, i attended this competition with JJ Mah and Marshal German. The competition is a scramble format for qualifyers and then World Cup format for finals. The only catch in the qualifyers is that they take top-all problems. This year there were 47 problems. You get two 3 hour sessions, one on the first day and one on the second. They also run three waves of competitors per day so that the line ups are a lot less. Let me tell you now, trying to do 47 problems in 2 days is a lot harder than it sounds, especially when a lot of the higher number problems get in the range os V10 and V11. The way that they score it is by giving every boulder problem 1000 points. They then divide the points by the number of people that complete a problem. Therefore if you´re the only one to do one problem, you´re almost guaranteed to make finals. When i attended this competition in 2008, you had to complete all the problems to make finals, all 46. This year, you had to do atleast 45 out of the 47 problems tomake finals. After two extremely long days of climbing, i completed 46 problemsand secure my place in finals. The finals were at the end of the third day of competition. For finals, they used the World Cup format, you get a preview of all 4 boulder problems and then you have 4 minutes per boulder. Also, if you start your last attemp at 3:59, you get to finish your attempt so you´re not stressed about running out of time. I flashed the first boulder,took 4 tries to do the second boulder, couldnt do the first move on the third boulder and flashed the fourth boulder. With my 3 tops in 6 tries, i finished 2nd for the second year in a row!

After the tout a bloc competition, we drove to Ceuse and decided to stop at the biggest man made lake in Europe. We parked in a decently busy parking and went down to the beach for the day. When we got back to our car, we realized it had gotton broken into… They had bent back the passenger side door far enough to stick a tool to unlock the door. We figured they didnt take more than a minute to rob the car because the took anything in plain sight. They took Mathilde´s purse, my toiletery bag, 3 mid size backpacks and 2 computer bags. F@#$ I couldn´t believe it, we had parked the car no farther than 20 meters from the main highway road. After filing a police report, we finished our drive to Ceuse. Talk about a downer for our trip. I don´t really want to get into it too much because it just makes me too sad. I´d say they took about 3000CAD from the car. They also took all my climbing stuff for the bouldering comp but its hard to put a $ amount on my climbing stuff. For the rest of the trip, it looks like we´re going to be heading to internet cafe´s again…

Now that that was done, we had to get back to the trip. There was no point in crying about the stuff that was lost because we knew we weren´t getting it back. I guess to look on the bright side, we weren´t hurt and everything that was lost is replaceable… After that, we spend 5 days in Ceuse. We climbed 4 days and took a rest day in the middle. The crazyest part of Ceuse was seeing a guy deck from 20 meters. We were chilling at the Berlin secter eating a late lunch when a guy fell off Rat Man (8a+) from 20 meters. His girlfriend either dropped her brake hand or wasn´t paying attention but he fell straight to the ground. We thought the worse but somehow, someone was looking out for this kid. In the mass of rocks and boulders around Ceuse, he managed to land in a perfect circle of bush with one meter of bush to help his landing. After 15minutes, he was just laying on the ground covered in blankets and looked like he was ready to climb again. There was no blood, no swelling, no cuts. Just to make sure, they didnt move him or anything. We called a helicopter which came in about half an hour and air lifted him out. We found out later that he broke his ankle and 2 discs in his back. To me, I think he was really lucky to suffer just those injuries.

After Ceuse, we headed to Barcelona for the World Cup. After dropping Mathilde off in Valence for her French training camp, we made the 5 hour drive down to Spain. The whole drive it ranged from 28 degrees to 34 degrees. When we got to Barcelona, we found the hostel that Jamie had booked in advance and got settled in. The hostel by the way is very nice, it´s about 10 minutes walk from La Rambla street and it looks like they get a lot of traffic through here. They also have free internet which is where im writing this post from. Qualifyers were on the first day and it was flash format. I flashed both routes and made it to semis tied with another 9 climbers. The wall was really crazy as well, it was almost 20m high and probably 10m overhanging. It started with a 20 degree overhanging wall, they a roof, then a extremely long middle section of about 20 degree overhanging, then another roof, then finished with a vertical part on the left andanother 20 degree overhanging top on the right. In the 3 World Cups that have done flash format, Imst, China and Barcelona, I haven´t fallen (knocking on wood). Semi finals were the next day and the route was extremely hard. The whole botton section was huge finger jugs until the part in the middle. When you pulled the first lip, it got hard right away. It stayed super hard until the next roof. I managed to fight my way through the bottom, rest a bit and fight my way through the second roof to fall trying to travers onthe vertical panel at the top. Because the middle section was so hard, almost everyone fell in the middle and it turned out, you just had to get through the bouldery section at the bottom and control a flat crimp just above half height. I climbed really well in semis and finished in 4th place. Finals was later that day. They ran the women first and told us that we would preview after the women finished. I thought that they were going to finish the women and then make our route go across the whole wall. Luckily that wasn´t the case and our route went almost straight up, besides at the top where it started to weave. In the middle of the finals route again was a super bouldery move. I almost fell on that move but got just high enough for the next hold. The next 5 moves weren´t that hard and you could recover from the bouldery section at the botton. Just before the roof, I made a big move up with my right hand and knew i had to match feet. When i matched feet, i could feel that I hadnt done it perfectly and a second later, it slipped. I almost hung on with just my left hand but after what seemed like a long second, i fell. After everyone else climbed, I ended up in 4th place. The boudery section at the bottom got to 4 of the climbers including Patxi Usobiaga who was the World Cup winner in Chamonix a couple of weeks ago.

Now we´re off the Rodellar and then Imst!!

China World Championships (part 2)

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Welcome back to the conclusion of my adventure in China. If you haven’t already read the first part of this post, I highly recomment it. Enjoy!

I’ve also just uploaded the best 24 photos that my dad took in China. You can check them out in the photo gallery!

Day 7 (July 4th)

Again I got up at 6:20 and stumbled into the bathroom to have my shower. This was the 4th time I had done it and I was pretty used to it. I turned on the shower to see that no water was flowing. A second later, my dad came back into the room and said the water wasn’t on. He had woken up 20 minutes earlier to a similar event. He had asked the hotel workers and they said something about the cold water not being on until 7am. THATS RIDICULOUS. How can you not have running water to the hotel rooms. On top of that, I always have a shower on comp mornings. It wakes me up and gets me ready for the day. I guess today would have to be different. So, on the most important day of the event for me, I don’t get a shower. I barely had time to grab a coffee before the bus left 10 minutes early for the competition. Once I got to the competition, I had had time to think things over. It didn’t matter that there was no shower, it was just another story I could tell when it was all over.

This day was schedule to be the semi finals and finals for mens bouldering as well as both rounds for women lead. For bouldering, I was psyched to see that our boulders would be on the good walls that they had made for the comp, not in isolation like in qualifyers. I did my first two problems pretty easily, they were hard but I was climbing well and I felt good. The third problem was really hard. I thought you had to hand jam between two volumes and mantle up but after I was done climbing, I saw there was a much easier way. Even so, I managed to get halfway through the boulder but fell twice trying to hit the bonus. I went into problem 4 having 2 tops in 3 tries. Problem 4 was one of the weirdest problems I had ever seen. There was a bunch of starting holds, then you had to traverse on just the friction of the wall, then do some sort of weird mantle to finish. Sadly, I took all the pictures on my dad’s camera, which is at home now but I’ll try to talk to him and get him to upload some pictures onto the site. I managed to do the bouder on my second attemp. I think during my redpoint attempt, I was climbing for almost 2 minutes. The problem was really subtle and you just had to figure out where to place your body so you wouldn’t fall backwards. I finished semis with 3 tops in 5 tries. To my amazement, I had enough for finals. I was so psyched to be in finals after only making finals once out of 3 world cups this year.

Finals Bouldering

Finals were pretty upsetting. I didn’t feel tired but after it was over, people were saying that I didn’t looke my usual strong self. Since it was my 4th day competing, I was probably getting tired. The first two problems of finals were way too easy. Almost every flashed the first one, just me and Killian slipped on one of the first couple of moves then sent it second go. I think all 6 finalists flashed the second boulder, which wasn’t harder than 7B (V7). The competition ended up coming down to the third boulder. The third boulder was another type of dyno to a mantle. The secret was getting a kneebar or a double kneebar, if you saw it, the boulder was painfully easily. I did not find the knee bar until my last attemp with time expired and when I went to do the move, my knee bar slipped and I fell. One of my friends tried the boulder in his street shoes just after finals and the first time he got to the mante part with the knee bars, send the problem in runners… The 4th problem was equally dissapointing with another 7B (V7). I flashed it easily, as did most others. I finished finals with 3 tops in 4 tries out of 4 problems. Usually you win or come second with that kind of record but I finished last. I can’t complain about my climbing, I felt like I climbed well even if I was feeling tired. I have to say that if the problems would’ve been as hard as they were supposed to, the results could have been different.

Day 8 (July 5th)

I’d like to start this day by saying Happy Birthday to my brother Jason McColl who turned 24 today!

I woke up at 6:20 like normal and yes, the water was running. This day was all of mens lead and all of womens bouldering. Since I had qualified so high on the first day, I was going 3rd last in this round. After observation, I knew I’d have probably at least 2 hours before going out and climbing. The semis route looked great, again, it went almost straight up. It looked a bit bouldery at the bottom and cruxy through the roof. Nothing out of the ordinary happened before I went out to climb and when I was waiting to go out and climb I was really excited. I figured this was my last route of the whole competition and if i ended up making finals, hey I made finals in both! I climbed my semi final super well and ended up making to the last 10 moves. When I got down, I though that it wasn’t going to be enough for finals but Jacob came running over and said I was sitting around 4th. With only 2 climbers after me, I was guaranteed finals. I quickly ran over to the warmup wall to cooldown from the heinus pump that I had. Finals were something different. After 5 full days of competition, I was really started to feel it. For my warmup before finals, I think i got pumped once, then I was good. After preview, I was psyched again, the route looked super hard the whole way up but at least it went straight up with a bit of sideways climbing in the roof and then on the last headwall. My goal was to make it to at least the last headwall, I know it’s possible and I figured if I climbed super well, maybe I could even win! I was the third climber out so after preview I went and got my stuff. I could see by the crowd and where the first two got lowered that they had gotton the last headwall but hadn’t done the route. While I was climbing, I felt good, but tired. By halfway, I was pumped and I knew I didn’t have the fitness to stop and rest. I climbed quickly through the whole bottom section and made a huge error going into the roof. I spent most of the preview looking at a weird move in the middle to a big blue sloper. We quickly decided you must go to it with right hand because crossing would be too hard. I figured only if the right hand was really good, I wouldn’t cross. Well, when I got there while I was climbing, I was already a bit pumped and the right hand felt pretty good so I crossed. It was such a hard move the way I had done it and to get out of it was even harder. I had to hike up my feet and do a super hard match. I clipped the draw and kept going. This hold was where most of the competitors in finals rested for a bit but I just kept on truckin’. 3 move later, I was ready to fall. I was climbing on adreneline now, I just kept saying one more move, one more move. My hands kept grabbing pretty good holds so I wasn’t falling. After doing about 5 moves like this, my arms couldn’t bend; I jumped more away from the wall than up when I tried to tag the next hold but either way, I was sailing downwards. That was it, I no more climbs to do. I asked Jacob who was near if I had beaten any of the first two and he replied no… I thought, oh no, I’m going to come last place in both finals… After I climbed, another Japanese climbers did the same stupid sequence in the middle but slipped off when the move was too hard. Cédric Lachat fell a few moves below me when he mis read the sequence and gased out. Finally a climber from Ukraine fell moves before me to land me in a 5th place finish.

Aftermath

That was the whole competition, a 6th place finish in Bouldering and 5th place finish in Lead. I had accomplished my goals and passed them. I thought it was a dream to make finals in both but in the end I had done it. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to win in both… haha or maybe all 3… Because of my double finals placing, it turns out that I had won the overall ranking. It came down to a battle between Cédric and me and in lead, he had to beat me by a few positions. Since I had beaten him, I had secured my overall victory. There was a ceremony and everything for it. For the first time in history, the Canadian Anthem was played at World Championships in Climbing. Also, this was the first year that they gave money for the overall rankings. I think they might have given money just because it was in China but I guess we’ll see in 2 years when the World Championships moves to Arco, Italy. I can tell anyone wondering that it is extremely hard to compete in both events. It’s even harder if you make finals in both. Your body gets more tired every day. I had to wake up at 6:20 for 5 out of the 6 days of the competition. The only other competitor to make finals in both events was Akiyo Noguchi. Most people could tell just by watching her in semi and finals bouldering that she looked really tired. She had won the World Cup 2009 rankings for Bouldering but during the finals, it looked like she could barely lock off. She had come 8th the day before in Lead and at the end of Bouldering, she finished 6th. She also won the womens overall! On top of trying to climb almost every day, when you’re competing here, you don’t eat a lot. For the semi and finals day, I barely ate at all. My stomach hurt so much at some parts and I would have to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes. I didn’t eat because I was afraid of getting even sicker. I ate what I needed to have enough energy to climb and thats about it. After it was all said and done, I’m obviously glad I competed in both events and I will probably do the same thing for every other World Championships I go to.

Day 9+10 (July 6th-7th)

My flight out of Xining left at 21:00 and I spent a short night in Beijing with my dad. The next morning we took a cab back out to the airport and I continued my journey home. My flight from Beijing went to Amsterdam where I waited almost 5 hours in the airport before catching my last flight back to Toulouse. I landed in Toulouse on July 7th at around 22:30. After almost another 2 days of travelling, I was finally done. I met my girl in the airport and she could tell that I had lost weight. Because of not eating and being sick, I had lost 3-4kg’s (6-7lbs). It took me a couple of days for my stomach to finally settle down and now I think it’s almost back to normal. Well thats the end of my adventure in China, I hope you enjoyed reading my experience!