It’s been decided, I’m heading down to Bishop during my Spring break. As most of you probably know, the 2010 Olympics are going to be held in Vancouver in under two weeks now. They’ve already started shutting down roads for the Olympics as well as jack up parking fees. They’re trying to convince 33% of people who drive to work to either take public transit or stay at home. They’re afraid that with all the traffic, it’ll be grid locked for most of the day.

That aside, I’ve decided to go to Bishop. It took a bit of convincing but I’ll be going down with at least Jamie Chong. Our tentative plans are to leave after school on Feb 12th, and come back on the 23rd. I also managed to snag mens Olympic quarter-final hockey tickets on the 24th, so I’m aiming to get back for that.

I haven’t been to Bishop in 2 years. Two years ago, I went down with my family just after Christmas and stayed for the New Year plus a couple of weeks. Just after New Years, there was a huge snowstorm while we were in Reno dropping off my parents and when we got back, there was 3 feet of snow everywhere. After a few more days, the snow settled in and it was climbable. This was when I did Mandala SDS! I’ve put together a tentative list of boulders I’d like to get on and they are as follows:

• The Swarm 8B+ Secrets of the beehive
• Spectre 8B Pollen Grains
• The Buttermilker 8A+ Buttermilks
• A Maze of Death 8A+ Buttermilks
• A Scanner Darkly 8A+ Buttermilks
• Form Destroyer 8A+ Buttermilks
• Stained Glass 7C+ Buttermilks

Those are just a few boulders I’d like to look at and try.  If there’s any others that you recommend, I’m open to options.  I’ll only be in Bishop for 10 days, so most likely, I’m not going to get around to trying all these boulders.

It turns out, I’m doing a small presentation at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival. I’ve always been interested in the festival but I’ve never really been too eager to give any presentations. Because I’m naturally a pretty shy guy, I find it hard to talk in front of large audiences. The first time I was asked to do a presentation at the VIMFF was a year ago but I said I couldn’t because I didn’t have any pictures. I tried to get enough pictures to make a presentation this year but some unfortunate events occurred.

As it stands right now, I think I’ll be doing a pretty short presentation of about 10 minutes. I’ll be talking about my past few years of climbing and where they’ve taken me. At the end of my short presentation, they’ll be a video that JJ Mah has put together of me climbing Dreamcatcher. I’m not sure how the layout of presentations is going to be but my good friends Sonnie Trotter and Will Stanhope are also giving presentations so be sure to check them out!

The date of our presentations is the 29th of January and if you pre-order your tickets, they only cost 17$ as oppose to 19$ day-of.

Seattle Bouldering Challenge was this past weekend.  I drove down with my dad Saturday morning to Seattle.  My mom had gone down on Friday to do some shopping and we picked her up from downtown along with Elise Sethna and her mom as well.  By 10:30, we had arrived at the competition and waited around for the rules meeting.  At 11, the comp started and I went about my usual routine.  SBC is a scramble competition format and they take your top 5 boulders.  I usually warm up a bit, then test the waters and try a few hard ones.  I kind of hurt my arm a week and a half ago from overtraining.  I was afraid of my arm hurting at the competition so I wanted to get qualifiers down as fast as I could.  About halfway through, I was getting nervous because I had fallen on quite a few boulders that I thought I should’ve done.  One of them was a really dumb mistake; I missed a hold on one of the problems and tried to dyno around the lip…  With about an hour left in the competition, Jamie Chong and I were looking at the two hardest problems.  They were both about 15-20 moves long and pretty overhanging.  I tried one of them and got slayed on the second move.  After a quick rest, I tried the other hard one and ended up flashing it.  Because it was worth the most points of all the qualifying boulders, I knew I had secured a spot in finals, so I stopped.

Haircut?

After the dust settled from the qualifying round, Johnny Goicoechea was leading in first place.  He had also done the hardest problem as well as one of the sloper problems that I couldn’t do.  Finals started at 6 and I had a little trick up my sleeve.  For the past 8 months, I haven’t cut my hair.  I always cut my hair right before I go to Europe which was back in April.  I figured because it was getting cold here in Vancouver, I would just leave my hair long and stay warm.  Finally, my hair got so annoying being in my eyes all the time, I decided to cut it.  I also wanted to do something ridiculous for SBC finals because I know it would get me psyched.  Because I wasn’t feeling 100% with my shoulders, I knew if I looked ridiculous, I would try all that much harder.  During the layover before finals, I had my mom cut my hair in a park.  The catch was that I cut my hair into a raging Mullet.  I thought it’d be funny and I think it was well received.  I competed in finals with the mullet and had nothing but complements on my new style.

Finals

I ended up climbing super well on all the finals problems except for one, the first one.  When I left isolation, I was told that all the men would be on Lime Green taped problems and all the women’s would be in Bright Pink taped problems.  I got out to my first finals boulder and it was pretty long.  Because I was really psyched to climb, after a short preview, I jumped on.  Halfway through the boulder, I looked up and saw a huge lime green hold.  Because I knew I was on a Lime Green boulder, I naturally grabbed it.  Right after I grabbed it, I heard a gasp from my mom who was watching from the side.  She said “Sean…” and I looked over, kind of surprised that she was trying to talk to me in the middle of a comp.  I looked back up towards the problem and immediately knew what I had done wrong.  Because my mind was so tuned into the colour “Lime Green”, I hadn’t noticed that the hold that I was on was boxed in Pink tape and just happened to be exactly the same colour as the route I was supposed to be on.  I jumped down and felt pretty dumb.  I think that’s the first time I’ve ever gone off route in a competition.  I take competitions pretty seriously, and this was very uncommon for me.  After a quick rest, I jumped on the problem and fired it second go.

The rest of the boulders in finals were super good.  I was lucky in the fact that boulder 3 and boulder 4 were very hard.  I knew that if the boulders were too easy, the 100 point bonus for flashing that I lost on the first boulder would come back to bite me.  Because I knew I was behind, I think I tried even harder.  The third boulder suited me well.  I had some jumping, some campusing, heel hooks and a final throw to the top rail.  Because I was the first person to top the boulder, the crowd erupted as I stuck the final jug.  I realized after that if I’d had fallen on the last move, I would’ve gone for a pretty big fall down into the crowd…

First and second place came down to the 4^th problem.  Johnny beat me in qualifiers so in a count back, he’d beat me.  Because I flashed the 3^rd problem and Johnny had flashed the first, we were almost tied going into the last problem.  I knew that if Johnny stuck the move that I had fallen on, he’d win.  His first try was probably his best try and he was way closer to sticking the move than I was.  Because the problems were so long, by the time he got to the crux move, he said he was too pumped.  After a very entertaining finals, I managed to pull out another win, Johnny was second and Brian Boyko took third spot.

BCIT

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on my site; the reason I’ve been off the grid is mostly because I started school at the beginning of September at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology). I’m currently in the CST (Computer Systems Technology) program at BCIT. This program takes 2 years to complete and at the end of it, I get a diploma. Once I have a diploma, there are a few options that I could pursue. I could stay at BCIT for another 2 years and complete a degree or I could transfer to a University and finish my degree there. Yet another thing I could do is start working with my degree. After a few years or working, if I wanted to upgrade my skills, I could go back to school or if I felt like I was doing well, I could stay working. My main goal is to find a flexible job that allows me to continue climbing at the level that I’m at.

Right now, I’ve been training about 3 days a week. I do about 3 hours of homework each day and on the weekends a bit more. BCIT is the most intense program I’ve been in. In high school, I didn’t do homework and I still got a high B average. The analogy that they keep repeating here is “It’s like trying to drink through a fire hose”. In most Universities, the maximum credits you can take per semester are around 15, I’m taking 28. I’m taking 8 courses but 2 of them are a lot easier than the other 6 because it’s only an hour a week. The other 6 courses are 2 hours of lecture and 2 hours of lab per week. Each week, there’s a scheduled lab in which you have to complete the lab work. On top of that, there are roughly 4 assignments that each take about 2 weeks to do. For each lecture week, I have to read about a chapter in each course. In total, I read 4 chapters a week, then try to do the labs, work on my assignments and try to climb.

That whole last paragraph was probably just a big brain dump but that’s what it feels like. I’m constantly doing work and I’ve almost completely stopped gaming. Last week, I had my midterms and I think they went pretty well. The highlight of midterms was getting 100% in Math!!

An upcoming even is the Seattle Bouldering Challenge which is on the November 21st. I can’t wait, it’s the best competition of Fall and it’s a great way to stay motivated.

History of the route

Yup, it’s true, I’ve just made the second ascent of the famous route “Dreamcatcher“. For those of you that don’t know what Dreamcatcher is, it’s a route on the Cacodemon boulder in Squamish, BC. Chris Sharma made the first ascent of the route back in 2005 and gave it a grade of 5.14d (9a). Although many strong climbers over the past 4 years including Sonnie Trotter, Ethan Pringle and Paul Robinson have tried the route, none have been able to make the second ascent. Before today, the route was unrepeated. I am also the first Canadian to climb an established 5.14d. Another funny thing is that Chris Sharma made the first ascent on September 23, 2005. Thats EXCACTLY 4 years ago to the day… An old article from Climbing Magazine dates his send. So, maybe it’s just the time of year, maybe it’s the position of the moon but something about this days brings luck to that route.

Here’s a picture of me taken today by Simon Parton. This attempt was the one just before the send.

A day to remember…

Today was a pretty random day of climbing. I have school every day during the week so getting out to Squamish is usually pretty hard to do during the week. Today, I planned a trip with one of my good friends Jamie Chong. I picked Jamie up from the SeaBus after school and headed straight to Squamish. We arrived around 4:30 and figured we had about 3 hours of usable light. We did a quick warm-up on easy boulders, went to some harder boulders then ran up to where Dreamcatcher lived.

My first attempt the day wasn’t very good. I had only gotten through the slab section and stuck the dyno once before. On my first attempt, I fell on the dyno because I had my foot way to high. I came straight to the ground and rested 5 minutes before my next try. My second try of the day was pretty good, I made it through the dyno, past the hard moves at the beginning of the rail all the way to the pin scars. There’s a hard move where you have to bump your left hand from a small pocket in the pin scar about 2 inches higher to a bad sidepull. While I was doing that move, I completely missed the hold and subsequently fell. I fell too far to jug back up the rope so I once again came to the ground. After resting about 30 minutes, I was getting nervous about the sunlight. The sun had dropped down behind the mountain and would be dark in about an hour. I figured if I fell again on the route, I wanted to rest another half an hour and give it a third burn. I decided that if I didn’t do on this attempt, my third burn would be more of a working session than a redpoint session.

The send

When I got on the route for the third time of the day, I felt confident. The air was getting cooler and there were no distractions. It was just me, the route and Jamie. I walked up the slab pretty fast and started setting up for the dyno. I jumped and it felt relatively easy. I tried to move fast through the first hard section to save energy for the two harder parts at the end. I made it through the bouldery moves at the bottom pretty fast. There’s a pretty good rest about half way up the route right before the pin scars. I got there and I was feeling good. I rested until I felt recovered and kept going. I started up the pin scars and everything started to click. On the move that I fell on last time, my feet blew off… I quickly threw my left foot back into the pin scar and made the desperate move to the jug. This was the last jug before the final crux of the route. Chris fell 6+ times in the final crux of the route and I was getting to it for the first time. I rested each hand a couple of times and started to get psyched up. Before I left the rest, I took a couple really deep breaths and decided it was time. I made the hard move around the corner with my right hand and quickly brought my left hand to the pinch on the corner. I lunged right to the crux hold and felt pretty good. I made room for my other hand to come in, then matched feet then did the move. My feet blew off as I was re adjusting my fingers on the hold but I still felt good. I pasted my left foot on the corner of the wall and threw into the next gaston. Two more moves and I was done… I moved my left foot to a higher smear in the crack, matched hands and threw for the final jug. I hit the jug and a stream of endorphins hit my body. I rested back and forth a bit then did the last 4 moves and clipped the chains. As I clipped the chains, I let out a victory cry that could be heard all around. I had done it, the second ascent of Dreamcatcher.

Victory!

As I lowered down off the route, I could barely believe it. I had redpointed my first 5.14d. Not only that but it was one of my longest projects to date. One year after Chris made the first ascent in 2005, I started working the route. It was more of a joke for me at the time because I thought that the route was too hard. I could still do every individual move except the moves in the pin scar and up at the top seemed too hard to do on redpoint. I had also never stuck the dyno. All of that work took me about 3-4 days. After that first year of trying it, I didn’t try it again until this year. Since getting back from Europe at the beginning of this month, I tried the route a total of 8 times. The first time I got on it again, it still felt so hard. The slab hurt my feet, the dyno was big and the last crux moves seemed unfathomable. The more I tried the route, the easier it became. My muscles started to remember the individual moves and it started to feel strong. The last time I was on the route was 3 days ago. I had made it through the slab, past the dyno all the way up to the pin scars. I only fell because the upper part of the pin scar was soaking wet. When I went to pull the hardest move in the pin scar, I fired right out of the wet hold. After that, I pulled past that part and worked the last crux about 5 times. Since I had done the last moves so many times over and over again, when I got there on redpoint, the moves seemed natural. Unlike Chris, I was very lucky in the fact that I never fell in the last crux on redpoint. The redpoint crux for me it turns out was the hard moves in the pin scars. Either way, the route was really hard for me. Whether or not I fell on the same moves as any other climber has very little relevance. In total, I probably spent over 8 days trying the route. Although my redpoint burn felt easier than any other time, I do agree that the route deserves the grade of 5.14d (9a). This route took me longer than any other route that I’ve done. I also feel that I’m the strongest I’ve ever been in route climbing after competing on the World Cup circuit in Europe this whole summer.

This is the video of Chris Sharma doing the route in Dosage4.