Scottish Champs

This year the Scottish championships was at Ratho again. The day was awesome with some fantastic routes, thanks to all the route setters.

In the qualifying round I was joint first with Dylan Mackenzie, so in the final I really needed to climb well to beat him.

There was four of us in the final and the final route was really crimpy and my kind of style. I was 3rd out of isolation to climb, and i looked up to see the last swinging clip to get an idea of where the last climber got to. Once I climbed past the swinging clip I was happy, but fell off one clip above that. Then Dylan was last out to climb and he slipped off a few holds below me.

I was happy with my win!

Scottish Youth Climbing Championships

Saturday the 15Th of May was the Scottish Climbing championships, which was at EICA ratho. I had been training soo hard for my European competition on the 4Th, and was climbing so strong at the Scottish. I was totally phyced and was climbing really good:). I managed to top all three of my boulder problems, and all three of the qualifying routes. I was joint first with Dylan Mackenzie going into the final. So if I wanted to win I had to climb strong and get to the top! We were in isolation and as we were joint first we had to play rock paper scissors to see who would be out first to climb, I lost the game so I had to leave isolation and climb. I was walking up to the start of the route and looked at it again, I put both hands on the starting hold then started to climb. I took my other foot off the ground and the first hold moved.I came off and was shacking cos Igot a fright.I started to climb again and managed to do some funky moves and get 3/4 of the way up,I was not even pumped when I came off, it was that I missed the last good jug to chalk up and I went for the hold on the roof and my hands just slipped off. Dylan was out next and he managed to climb really strong and get a few moves below me.

For years me and Dylan have been so close at competitions and he always seemed to beat me, but after training lots I managed to become Scottish champion:) woo hoo.

The Scottish Final

On Saturday was the Scottish final, which was held in Extreme-Dream Aviemore, The temperature was really hot, about 25-30'C. In the morning we had to complete 15 boulder/ top rope problems, then go into the semi/Finals in the afternoon. Four of the top rope warm up routes were out side on a transportable wall, which was really good as we were in the sun.

In the morning I got 1492 points out of 1500, which made me manage to climb in the semi finals. The semi final route was on the roof, which I think was graded about 7a. Only three people out of my group got through to the final in the afternoon, which was also on the roof. I managed to get the end of the roof which was 7c and so did Paul Williamson. So we had to have a super final on the same route, keeping climbing it over and over again until one of us came off, we both had two goes at it, I managed to get to the 2nd last clip on my 2nd attempt, and Paul got to the end.