Report: BMC Youth Open, Sunderland - Dec 2011

Registration opened at 8am last Saturday morning but the café at the Sunderland Climbing Wall was ready offering bacon rolls and hot coffee for sale to the 95 climbers and their supporters that turned out to the final BMC youth competition of the year.

The number of entries may have been down on previous years but the standard of the climbing was sky high with 2 super finals required to determine the podium slots.

This event was to be used to help select the GB Youth Team for 2012 but there was still a bit of ‘easing in' to the first routes so that climbers could settle their nerves. Route setters (Mark Pretty, Tom Randall and Gary Vincent) had taken over the main walls making good use of the massive 28m long barrel wall in the centre. This posed a challenge to the video camera operators trying to ensure they could smoothly record the whole route and there was much adjusting of tripods, shifting of seats and craning of necks trying to make sure none of the action was missed. Parents and climbers jostled for a comfy spot studying their upcoming challenges and after a briefing from Rob Adie those first on the start list roped in.

With some sharing of routes we had 6 climbers on the wall and right from the start there were tops. In fact on the first qualifiers there were a total of 48 tops representing 50% of the competitors.

Read the full report by Avril Gall on the GB Climbing Team  website

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