Having arrived and spent a few days in Colorado, I was really psyched to climb on rock so it was a bit strange to put that on hold and head to Vail for the World Cup. Don’t get me wrong, I was psyched for the competition but it was an odd transfer from being really excited for rock to getting ready to try hard on plastic. We set off from Boulder with a van full of people and it looked to be a good weekend; everyone was feeling good, the weather was nice and the views on the drive spectacular.

I was excited for the qualifiing round, in a good mood and ready to do my best. I really enjoyed this round, I felt I climbed well although I could have climbed better…I have a tendency to mess up on the last moves of problems. I am still not sure if this is often because the last moves are really hard or if I psyche myself out when I get there. Perhaps a combination. The third problem was the highlight of the whole weekend for me. It was a backwards double dyno out of a roof with a burly, basic finish up a steep wall. I looked at the problem, pulled into the start position for the jump and thought “hmmm this might be beyond me but I’ll have a throw” . I caught the jump first go and pushed throught to the top, suprising myself by flashing the problem. I can’t describe the adrenalin and psyche that I had at that moment, that must be what it feels like to be one of the top people that just pulls it out of the bag all the time!

Problem 3 (qualifiers), Photo by David Mason

 

Problem 1 (qualifiers), Photo Will Hummel

Problem 4 (semi finals), Photo by Will Hummel

I qualified for the semi finals in 16th place. Very happy. I had acheived my goal by making the semis but I was still eager to do well the next day. I won’t go into tons of detail but I didn’t climb very well  in the semis. I made lots of silly mistakes, misread the problems and generally just didn’t sort myself out. I am not sure what went wrong really, I don’t think the problems were far beyond me…I just seemed to be missing some kind of something!

Well done again to Shauna who keeps doing brilliantly!

 

Shauna on the Podium, Photo by David Mason

We spent the next day chilling before heading back to Boulder. On the monday we went up to Lincoln Lake, a beautiful location. You park at about 13,000ft and walk down to climb just below 12,000ft. The air feels really thin up there and you really notice it on the walk back up to the car! The climbing there was better than I expected and I am psyched to go back to finish off a cool problem that I nearly did.  As I didn’t actually get up anything that day all I have to offer for the end of this blog is some footage of some pretty cool (I’m sure you’ll agree…) dance moves that I was taught by Chris Webb-Parsons. To give it a context, you must know that I have “Kiss” by Prince playing though headphones while I’m doing it (if you play the song while watching it it works a lot better)….see if you can spot the following moves:

1. Supermarket shopping

2. Hanging up washing.

3. Feeding the chickens.

4. Mowing the lawn (first getting the mower going..)

5. Driving a bus.

Filmed by the infamous Shauna Coxsey