Lead Climbing Competition

by Henry James

University Lead Climbing Competition

So it actually happened, SUMC entered the country’s first ever lead climbing competition (apparently). So myself (Henry), Hugo, Jack Bell and Callum venture up to Sheffield on Tuesday evening, representing Swansea-what could possibly go wrong?

It began like many SUMC trips; crammed into Hugo’s C1 with our exceptionally log-legged companions. We were all in high spirits, everything was going to plan. And then. Well it sort of stopped going to plan. Mr Bromley being the engineer he is seemed to forget that his car runs on petrol, so here in the f****** middle of absolutely f****** nowhere on the side of the f****** motorway in the night, we wait. So while I decided to take a much needed toilet break in a nearby bush, Jack began snapchat-ing the event and Hugo phoned Mommy asking for help. Oh, we did wake up some locals to ask for help, just to be told politely to go away.

After arriving at the hotel at two or three in the morning we managed to make it to Awesome Walls on-time for Wednesday’s competition in the morning. The walls really are awesome. These walls dwarfed Dynamic Rock’s walls, even more so than Callum and Jack dwarfed myself. There were nine big routes for us to complete ranging from 6a to 8a (ouch). Now I strongly advise anyone who competes in competitions in future to at the very least read the rules first. This was my first mistake, I got to the last move of route #2 and came off, not allowing me to participate in any more difficult climbs. But my failure did not put off our two new members Callum and Jack. Who both completed route #4 with relative ease and made remarkable progress on routes #5 and #6. HEROES. Don’t let me miss that Hugo also failed on #2 after running out of time on #3.

So thanks to Callum and Jack SUMC didn’t do too shabby at all. And so we returned (with a minor breakdown in the middle of nowhere..again) enlightened that we need a bigger Dynamic Rock, to read the rules and bring more tall people because apparently they’re awesome.

And we all lived happily ever after.