The Welsh Climbing Championships

Well done to all the climbers who took part in the Weekends climbing competition up in the Valleys! This Event is becoming the Big one for South Wales with climbers trying 5 routes of increasing difficulty to qualify for a final on the ultimate route. this year we saw routes from F4+ to F8a and i can vouch for how tiring the day is after having to demo over 20 routes for the categories!

The Swansea Squad plus a few locals took on the challenges set with great enthusiasm and as is becoming the norm, we had some amazing results! None more so than Rhys Hall and Emily Slade who both ranked high in the respective categories showing they are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Also Cameron narrowly missed out on the final after only 1 year climbing!  The Event which is in its 3rd year has grown and grown and this year was no exception with 103 climbers taking part the standard was high. The comp is aimed at getting youngsters involved and is a great way to prep for the up and coming BMC YCS, as such the Dynamic Rock Team will take great confidence going forward from the performances put in by our new young rising starts.

 Jake Pugh is also worth a massive mention for some how reaching the final after 5 bruising routes, and this after being sick several time on the floor amongst his fellow competitors. Maybe he was trying to put them off? anyway he dug in and got the job done. We also had some great news from the summers bouldering comp we attended were a few of our team won there categories including Mossie Davies who claimed her first comp Victory!!!  I cannot really finish with out mentioning the big guns of the DR team, Robin and Chris climbed well in a very very impressive category were the standard seemed to be climb 8a or go home, but they held there own and came very close to reaching athe final. and of course Rhos didn’t disappoint claiming a 2nd place after a lengthy layoff missing out on the top spot by 3 holds over 6 routes is about as close as it gets. 

In the Student Categories it was left to Dan Carrol and Tristan Spencer to battle onwards as Swansea’s only representatives but they both did amazing well reaching the final with Dan taking 2nd place.

That leaves Ashleigh and you probably already heard how he demolished all the routes including a crowd pleasing campus of the final roof to take top spot on the podium. Next up is the British Open for Ash in a few weeks time and I’m sure you will all join me in wishing him luck.

Results from the comp below – sorry about funky layout i cannot get the table to work properly