2nd Annual Stone Summit Crushville Competition

If you live in Atlanta, or any other big city for that matter, you're familiar with traffic. Mathematicians may explain it using Chaos Theory, civil engineers attempt to minimize it, and average humans may recognize its variety of forms. They range from simple congestion to a complete standstill and somewhere in between is the traffic variety termed slow-and-go. The same term could be used to describe Saturday's competition at Stone Summit.

I admit, I'm not an avid competition climber  and I also admit that I am not the foremost expert on rules and proceedings at ABS, SCS, or other events; but I did recognize a serious flaw in the competition's format. With nearly 200 registered competitors and only one climber allowed per 10-20 horizontal feet of wall, huge lines formed. If you didn't flash the boulder the wait time to try again could be 15-20 minutes. It made for a seriouw flash pump and quite a bit of stress. In the comp's 4 hours, I only made it on the wall 15 times. That's less than 4 times an hour! You can check out results here.

Not resting, just waiting

 My favorite comp boulder

I would like to draw your attention to several other things as well.

1. Outside Magazine ranked Chattanooga, TN the best city to live in. See the October issue for more details.

 

2. Urban Climber Magazine has ventured a guess at the 100 best boulder problems in the USA. The Shield at Little Rock City tops the list at number 1. It seems that the folks at UCM got this one right - The Shield, no doubt, earns the title "best boulder in America." Other boulders in the Southeast made the cut as well including Golden Harvest and Crocbloc at Rocktown and Millipede, God Module, and Slider at Horse Pens 40.

3. The annual Hound Ears competition and the first leg of the Triple Crown Bouldering Series is coming up this weekend. If you haven't seen the weather forecast take a look! I can't wait to climb on real rocks for the first time in months!

See you out there!