SUMC - Swansea University Mountaineering Club

This term, the club regulars have been all geared towards this years BUSA bouldering competition. For those of you who don't know, bouldering is essentially climbing a short distance above the ground so that you can safely jump off without the need for a rope. The challenge is in the technical difficulty rather than the height. It can be done indoors at climbing centers or outdoors on a crag. The BUSA competition was an indoor event.

With only six spaces available on the team, and a group of regulars turning up to practically all training sessions, Bouldering Team Captain Adam Shore was finding it hard to select the team. Selection would be based on a warm up competition to the main event, held at The Warehouse climbing centre in Gloucester on 20th February. Eleven club members took part, and considering this was a warm up to the real thing, it actually turned out to be bloody hard! What we didn't know was that this competition was the last in a series of three, each getting progressively harder. A few were (understandably) demoralized by the toughness of the competition, but others strived through and did very well, with some competitors getting their scores into the 100s. Our first team consisted of Jacky Tyrie, Rhys Westcott and Michael Barclay. The second team made up of Daisy Richards, Matt Woodfield, Adam Shore with reserves, Stewart Clayton and Stuart Llewellyn.

The squad went to Liverpool's Awesome Walls climbing centre to represent our club, and our University on the 12th of March. With 230 people competing in a top class venue, both teams did extremely well, scoring very high. Rhys Westcott got the highest score, closely followed by Michael Barclay. Adam Shore impressed quite a few people by completing the dyno route with ease (a dyno involves jumping from hand and foot holds, onto another hand hold a considerable distance away). Considering Daisy Richards was a fresher to the club this year, she did the club proud with her efforts, as did Matt Woodfield in his first BUSA environment. Jacky Tyrie, came third over all in the women's competition receiving a bronze BUSA medal much to the delight to the rest of the squad. Also big thanks to Peter Boyle, and Steffan Davies for being our route judges, not an easy task!

Congratulations once again to the teams who did the Uni and the club proud! With rumors of more BUSA events like this next year, let's hope for even more success in 2006!

Stu
http://www.uwsmc.org.uk