Bend Climbing Team: May 2011

Lukas on his way to flashing his finals route.

With local SCS competitions behind us it was time for the Pacific Northwest Regional Championships. This year the comp was held at Clubsport in Tigard Oregon. Clubsport has been host to great local, regional, divisional, and national competitions in the past and offers a great view for spectators and ample climbing terrain for the competitors. This on-sight competition had two qualifier sessions where climbers had two routes with four minutes to do each route and a finals round where the top ten in each category had five minutes to do one route.
I joined Tristan and Lukas in the isolation zone to help them get warmed up and prepped for their routes. After they came back from preview they both seemed to think the routes looked pretty good and doable. Both Tristan and Lukas advanced to finals with Tristan in 3rd fro Male Youth B and Lukas tied for 1st after flashing both routes for Male Youth D.
After session one it was back into iso to get Jack ready for his two climbs. After Jack came back into iso from the route preview we worked on some specific movements that he thought would be helpful on his two qualifier routes. Jack climbed strong flashing route one and fell high on route two. Jack climbed well enough to move into finals in 9th place for Male Youth C.

Tristan powering through the opening sequence in finals.

With only one route for finals there isn't much room for mistakes since you don't have another route. For most categories the top six would receive invites to Divisionals so the pressure was on. After the route preview it seemed like the climb for each Tristan, Jack, and Lukas had some similarities. All three started out on good holds on steep terrain, traversed and turned on the wall, and finished with smaller holds and techy climbing. Back in iso each climber came up with their plan of climbing smooth and fast on the steep sections with good holds, shaking out and chalking up on the last good jug, and changing gears to launch into the smaller holds and precision foot work.

Jack mid-way up his finals route.

The Bend climbers' climbed strong and smart with good route reading and efficient climbing. Jack climbed his way from 9th heading into finals to a 6th place finish and a invite to move on to the Divisional Championships! Tristan came out of iso climbing strong and smooth through the lower power section and fell high on the route which placed him in 4th place and a invite to Divisionals. Lukas climbed through his lower climb calm and collective and choose great holds to shakeout and chalk up on before pulling into the upper portion of the route. With the only flash of the route for his category Lukas finished 1st and will move onto Divisionals.

Bend Climbing Team Results

Tristan Helmich- 4th Male Youth B

Jack Groh- 6th Male Youth C

Lukas Strauss-Wise- 1st Male Youth C

Every year climbers from throughout the Northwest spend a day lending a hand at the Smith Rock Spring Thing volunteering on a variety of service projects all over the park. This year there were over 200 volunteers with 8 of them being from the Bend Climbing Team. The team had a good time and put in some hard work smoothing out the "chute trail" and prying out rocks that pose a tripping hazard for climbers walking in and out of the park. The hard day of work was rewarded with a couple of pitches of climbing followed by some well earned burritos at the volunteer dinner.
It was great to spend the day participating in such a cool event and to see what a thriving climbing community we have here in Central Oregon.