Bishop Spring Break Recap

Van at the Pit.  Photo: Avery

What?  Spring Break was over two weeks ago?  That makes this post long overdue.  Better late than never I guess.

The Bend Endurance Academy climbing team paired up with the climbers from the Multnomah Athletic Club to put on a super sweet trip to Bishop CA!  We had a great time camping, climbing, cooking, and just hanging out in the desert for a couple days and getting some sun. Here's a quick day by day recap and a bunch of cool pics. Also, check out these blogs for more pics and words on the trip:

Grant Rants and Vanessa Listens

Live Stellar

Five Ten

Day One:  Pack up the van and trailer and we're off!  Wait.  What's that noise?  Small detour to "The Shop" in Lapine to get a exploded parking break fixed.  We actually got really lucky to find a place so close that would do some work on a Sunday!

Limping in to The Shop to get some work done. Photo: Avery

After our minor setback it was back on the road through the openness of Eastern Oregon only to have our avocados confiscated at the California border.  Out of California avocado-less and into Nevada and eventually the biggest little city on earth- Reno!  We spent the evening bouldering and climbing at CommRow in the heart of Reno.  CommRow is home to the tallest climbing wall in the world.  The lead wall is a two pitch climb on the outside of an old casino set against a backdrop of the bright neon lights of Reno.  Inside there are two free standing boulders that had some cool angles and fun problems.

Sadie crushing at Commrow. Photo: Tempest

Day Two:  Following a good nights rest it was back on the road for our final push to Bishop.  After a good solid 4 hours we made it to Bishop and the "pit", our home away from home for the next couple days.  We set up tents and fortified them from the winds that are notorious for the area and head to the Sads for an evening bouldering session.

Almost there... Photo:Tempest

Ethan, Sadie, Ryan, and Lukas Chillin' at the campsite. Photo: Tempest

Day Three:  Happys!  We had a private tour guide, Ryan Rougeux (pronounced different than coach Mike's last name even though they're cousins????) , bring us to the best of the best in the Happys.  a bunch of people sent Solarium (v4), some sends on Serengeti (v5), Sends on Monkey Hang (v3).  River had a good day with sends up to v10. Lukas set a record of sending Serengeti after what had to have been 30+ attempts.

Tempest, Abby, and Sadie happy to go to the Happy Boulders!

Lukas FINALLY sending Serengeti (v5). Photo: Avery

Ethan exploring the boulders. Photo: Tempest

Day Four:  Back to the Happy Boulders with our friends Drew and Christina from Bend and Cameron from the Rogue Rock Gym.  We climbed a bunch of v3's and worked some really pockety climbs up on the rim and Ryan and Ethan did pushups.  Lots of smores back at camp!

The crew of crushers after a hard day of climbing.  Photo: Avery

Abby pickin' pockets on Solarium (v4).  Photo: Tempest

Day Five:  Last day to make the fingers bleed so we headed to the Buttermilks!  Super fun and hard climbs on the Birthday boulders sent ranging from V1 to V3.  What a difference going from Tuff to Granite.  Everyone gave a whirl on the iconic Ironman Traverse (v5) but nobody sent- this time. A couple send of the truly unique Buttermilk Stem (v1).  Lots of time spent and with great success on two v3's on King Tut boulder with some really techy climbing to rounded top outs.  Oh, and to finish it up Mike beat Peter in the coaches climbing challenge by sending a v6 on Tut boulder.  Peter won the coaches beard challenge of which Mike had no chance in winning anyway.

Parade of pads.  Photo: Tempest

Tori topping out a high v1 in the milks.  Photo: Avery

Alana on her way to sending in the milks.  Photo: Avery

Sadie on Ironman Traverse.  Photo: Avery

Sore skin.  Photo: Tempest

Alana on the Birthday Boulders.  Photo: Avery

Nothing better than some heel clicking after climbing!

Mike getting nervous that Pete might stick this and take the lead in the coaches contest.  Photo: Avery

Day Six:  13+ hours in the van with no complaints.  I'm assuming this meant that everyone had a blast!

Happy or un-happy with 13 hours in the van? Photo: Tempest

Climbers on the trip:  Mike (Bend), Vanessa (Bend), Peter (MAC), Avery (MAC), River (Bend), Abby (Bend), Sadie (Bend), Tempest (Bend), Ethan (Bend), Lukas (Bend), Ryan (MAC), Tori (MAC), Alana (MAC).

The whole crew!

ABS 13 Youth National Championships

It's been over a week since the 2012 ABS 13 Youth National Championships in Colorado Springs so it's probably a good time to post something about it.  This was the fourth ABS Nationals that I've coached at and I can say hands down it was the best one yet!  For the second year in a row we had really nice comp style walls and I'm happy to see the events being held in bigger non-climbing gym venues.  This years walls were built by our hometown company Entreprises.  The walls looked great and I'm still digging the inclusion of slab in the big comps.

Most of the EP wall.

This ABS season we had two team members qualify for nationals with one making the long trip out to CO.  Lukas represented the Endurance Academy in his third straight ABS Championships.  The comp was three days long with qualifiers, semi-finals, and finals.  Lukas just squeaked by qualifiers with a 13th place finish on the first day.  Coming back the next day Lukas made sure he was jazzed to climb and it showed with his 3rd place finish on day two.  The finals were really tough and Lukas climbed well flashing finals #1.  Problem #2 threw him for a loop and he had a hard time making it past a big deadpoint as did the majority of the field.  Problem #3 was a bit more steep and powerful he made it about half way.  His great climbing deposited Lukas in 4th place in US in the Male C category and made the US team for the second year in a row!

Lukas in semi-finals, photo:Bob Lockhart

As always is super inspiring and impressive to watch these athletes climb.  In the past couple years it's been really interesting to watch the bar keep getting raised in the youth D and C categories and it's hard to imagine what level these kids are going to bring climbing to in the coming years.  

Congratulations to all the teams and athletes and thanks for putting on a great show!

The Youth National Team, photo: Bob Lockhart

Metolius Climbing Tour

Home grown. Consumed worldwide.

The Endurance Academy Climbing Team took a day off of pulling on plastic and doing crunches to take a tour of Bend based Metolius Climbing.  The crew over there has always been super supportive of the team and it was really cool to see all the gear that we use is made just a couple miles away from where we train.  Thanks for the tour Scott, and thanks for the continued support Metolius!

Inspecting carabiners

Ethan showing off some BRD's

Scott explaining the process to us.

Tristan wants this as his neck bling.

ABS Divisional Championships

Every year it becomes more and more evident that the future of climbing are those that are competing in the youth comp scene of today.  This past weekend at the ABS Divisional Championships we saw again what the future of climbing holds.

The Seattle Bouldering Project was host to this years Divisionals which was a first for the ABS season.  Typically for the ABS championship season we would have a Regional Championships and then move right to Nationals.  This added qualifying round has added one more comp to filter out climbers which should result in having the best of the best at Nationals and raise the bar a bit in youth competitive climbing.

The Academy had 8 climbers compete in the two day event and had a great showing amid some very strong climbers and teams.  We finished 5th as a team out of 23 teams!  The four teams ahead of use are all from multi-gym teams from major metro areas so we're pretty psyched to do so well with such strong competition.

Results  

Female D

9th- Leah Pfeiffer

Male D

15th- Brady Pfeiffer

Female C

5th- Olivia Brumwell (invite to Nationals)

21st- Iris Flattery

Male C

1st- Lukas Strauss-Wise (invite to Nationals)

Male B

16th- Jack Groh

Female A

18th- Abby Black

20th- Riley Joyce