I created a twitter account a few weeks ago, and I’ve decided to share it with the world. I’ll be trying to update it as much as possible. This is kind of an experiment for me. I know I’m online so often at school, I’m sure I can take a minute to update my twitter.

You can go to my twitter page by clicking HERE or you can follow the link on the sidebar at the right.

This past week in Vancouver had some of the most epic weather of the year. Last Wednesday, it rained for almost the whole day. I guess rain isn’t that uncommon in Vancouver. Come to think of it, it didn’t just rain; it was hailing for a few hours and actually sticking to the ground. After the hail was done, it rained some more and made it look as though it had been snowing… Thursday and Friday was absolutely amazing weather, sunny, no rain, almost like it was summer again. I can’t wait for it to actually start snowing so I can try to cram skiing and snowboarding into my already hectic schedule.

At the beginning of the year, I found out that I could buy a season’s pass for Whistler/Blackcomb for only 400$. I seriously debated it and ended up not getting one. I’m pretty happy I made that decision. If I had a Whistler pass, I’d feel obliged to use it and because I do 3 hours of homework a night, it would be pretty hard to get up there as much as I’d want to.

3rd note is SBC is this weekend!! I’m so excited; I haven’t done a bouldering competition since the Tout-A-Blocs back in France in late July. I also haven’t been training too much bouldering so it’ll pretty interesting. When I got home from Europe, I wanted to stay in route form so I could do Dreamcatcher. Once I sent that, I started bouldering but last Tuesday I ended up hurting my arm. I think I just trained too hard on Tuesday because I tried climbing on Wednesday and it hurt soooo much after only an hour of climbing. I iced it, did some abs, and went home. I tried to climb again on Thursday and got about an hour and a half before it started hurting again. I rested for another two days and went climbing last night for a couple of hours without it hurting at all. As for SBC, it’s probably my favourite competition of the fall. The atmosphere is great and they always set 100+ new problems.

After SBC, I’ll have another two weeks of school, then finals, then Christmas Vacation!! It seems as though this semester went by pretty fast and at the same time, I can’t believe how much new material I’ve learned. I’ve learned how to program in Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and I’m just starting to learn PHP. Sometimes, when a new language gets introduced I get lost, but because I ask a ton of questions to my teachers and friends, usually I catch on quickly a bit later. As much as I like learning at school, I can’t wait for the Christmas holidays to start. I also know I start holidays almost a week before most other schools. My last exam will be on Dec 11th!

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.

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…