This last weekend was wonderful! We went down to Horse Pens 40 in Alabama for Sloperfest, which is an outdoor bouldering competition and local music festival. We didn't get any pictures, even though I brought the camera to make sure I would have pics for this post.
Micah and Toby didn't want to pay the $$ to compete, so they were just spectators (aka, they paid the normal amount for a weekend stay at HP40 and they got to hear some awesome music and catch some free stuff thrown into the crowd). I paid $45 to compete. I got about $15 back with the sweet t-shirt I got for competing, and $4 more back for the Climbing Magazine issue I got. I also got lots of stickers and some other weird stuff (like a little box of Curves for Women brand cereal).
The comp was a climb-everything-that-you-possibly-can-during-the-comp format. Every climb you did was added up into your score. I entered beginner (Horse Pens is SUPER sandbagged, which means that the hardest climbs I have done there are V2! It kind of sucks to have to enter beginner when I've been climbing for 4 years). Toby's done this comp format before, and both he and Micah advised me to just do as many problems as I could. It's better strategy to do 10 V0s than 3 V2s. Only try a problem once or twice before moving on.
I added up my score at the end, and with 32 total problems (at least tripling the amount of problems I've ever done in a day before) I had 4400 points. During the awards ceremony, I found out that I won by 2000 points! The girls in 2nd and 3rd must not have known the strategy for getting a lot of points. They each did about 10 V2s, while I did 30 V0s (well, I did some V1s and 2s also).
For my troubles, I got some crazy thin finger-tip skin, sore shoulders, and a free pair of La Sportiva shoes of my choice.
The warm weather part comes in because it was 65 and sunny Sat., 69 and sunny today, and it will be 72 and partly cloudy tomorrow. I hope it continues this way!!
Micah made a video of this weekend, but we were all so busy climbing during the comp, that this is all footage from today (Sun.). We all climbed so much this weekend, that the video is only of Toby, who was the only one out of us man enough to keep climbing today...
HP videoalso, Micah made another short video a while ago with some random climbing in it. It's a good one. It includes LRC, a random creekside area that's really cool, and our landlord's awesome boulderfield. Here's a link to that one:
Cool videoNext week is Wooster's spring break, and WOODS will come down for 2 weeks. I'm so psyched! Micah's dad is coming the middle weekend of WOODS being here, and his mom is coming the weekend after. So many visitors this month! It looks like it will be a good one!
-Stella
HP40 fun!
Ambdizzle in a sea of slopers
This boulder is called the Turtle Head Boulder. I'm kissing the turtle.
A backpacking trip. The rhododendron tunnel is so cool!
Matthew is from Jamaica. For us it was warm here, but I don't think he felt as warm as the rest of us...
The dictator of WOODS - Emily! Here she is giving you a taste of her climbing style - smooth and flowing. It's always beautiful to watch her climb.
you might not be able to see it, but they're all reading
