European Youth Bouldering Champs 2012 - Grindelwald

I have decided to write an update for each day of the trip and post them up when I get home on Monday night.

Friday Morning:

So I'm in Switzerland. We landed last night at about 10 local time. The flight was delayed by an hour but it wasn't too bad. It was really warm and it took us a while to find our hotel. I had a bit of trouble sleeping cause of the heat but eventually got there.

I am currently on a double decker train to Grindelwald via Bern and Interlaken, where the comp is taking place. The route goes all along the side of a huge lake with the mountains beyond, what a great way to start the trip!

Friday Evening:

Today has dragged on a bit since we arrived in Grindelwald. We got to the hostel that we are staying at with no problem. The changeover times between trains were amazing; the hostel is really nice with a great view of the Eiger from the bedroom window. It also has free Wi-Fi… Yes!!!

We had to wait around in the center of town for about 3 hours, which felt like all day.. Whilst waiting I had a good quick look at some of the problems and they look very technical; my sort of thing! I can’t wait to get on them tomorrow.

Sunday Evening:

Sorry guys, I forgot to write something up yesterday. I was tired and stayed up to watch the world cup final in Vail which finished at 3:30 am here.

So yesterday morning I was feeling pretty confident seen as a few of the problems looked like they might favour me. We arrived early enough to watch the male youth A qualification which ended up having some similar problems to ours. After warming up I went straight out and got on problem 2 first and flashed it. After that I had a few attempts at some of the others and got very close to the hardest problem 8, but didn’t succeed. I then proceeded to flash 2 other problems; a slab and a volume problem. In the end I got 3 tops and 6 bonuses which put me in 9^th place. I'm pretty happy with my result as I have moved up an age category this year and only dropped one place from last year.
 

 

Dom Burns on youth B final problem 3

This morning we got up and went down to watch the finals and the climbing was great. One of the junior problems was not topped but other than that it was an exciting final. Dom Burns from Ireland came 1^st in the youth B category; an amazing effort from all the climbers. I tried the junior problems which I would have been climbing on if I had made the final after the competition had ended and managed to get one of them. It was a crazy sideways dyno to an undercut and a weird stretched out last move where you could either static it or leap and hope for the best.

Overall this weekend has been great! I always love competition, the bigger and more important the better. I won't bore you with the details of tomorrow's trip home and I can't wait for the final round in L’Argentiere in a few weeks time.



spot the difference...