Struggle Bus 2022 - Saturday

Struggle bus: slang; (1) a situation, task that seems difficult or frustrating. (2) The name of a climbing competition series. 

Although it wasn't my thing, I decided to participate in my local gym's annual bouldering competition series, the Struggle Bus, just to broaden my experience. To my great surprise, I participated in enough comps to find myself spending last Saturday evening participating in the Struggle Bus finals at the Phoenix Rock Gym. 

The usual climbing experience

It turns out that you just needed to participate in 3 out of the 6 comps to 1) be automatically entered in the finals, and 2) get a free T-shirt - so if you're a climber in the valley looking for a free, well-designed shirt (and honestly, who isn't?)… you now know how to get one. Here's a picture of the shirt:

"Welcome to the Struggle"

   Backside

Even if the images don't do it justice, but the shirt is a good reason to participate. Thank you, Cat, for designing the shirt! 

The competition format was a redpoint format, which meant that all the competitors had 2 hours to complete the hardest 5 climbs they could, with bonus points awarded for it being done on the first go, and proof that they did it had to be signed off by 2 witnesses, or a single judge. Competitors were separated by brackets, and sandbaggers (another topic on itself) who were too strong for their format would be bumped up to the next category. 

The name of the game during this competition was to not get hurt. I was planning on heading out to Oak Flat to try Evolution the next day, so I was just hoping to make it through without getting hurt. I spent the majority of the time climbing easier stuff with Halo, who, like Ashwin, also played a formative role in my climbing. Halo unfortunately popped a pulley about a month ago, so he too was down for taking it easy. 

We first started climbing in the lead cave, which had traverse boulders. The lead cave is probably my favorite area in this gym, as traversing is one of my favorite movements in climbing, second to dangling on roofs. The running joke that I like to say about my climbing is that I probably have more mileage going horizontally, and upside-down than I do going up, which is probably why I suck at sport climbing. Going up is overrated, anyways. Hanging around and dancing through the holds are where it's at! Here are some photos Naoko shot of me during the comp on a V6 traverse, probably one of my favorite climbs in the whole comp.   

Karate Kick Incoming

Photo credits: Naoko

The karate kick finish

Photo credits: Naoko

Halo and I spent about an hour in the lead cave, and then we headed to the upstairs overhung bouldering area. We ended up meeting with Machanzy and Brandon up there, and we sent a few more moderate bouldering problems until the time went up, and we had to submit our scoresheets, and then wait for the podium placements and raffle. 

The interesting thing about this competition is that there are multiple raffles for a bunch of prizes. All the competitors get one as their name is drawn out of a hat- so that particular one isn't very interesting. The interesting thing here is the raffle for a crashpad. The way this works, is that each participant pays a dollar for a ticket, and they can buy as many tickets as they want. The money goes into a prize pot. Whoever has the first ticket drawn out of the pot gets the crashpad, but whoever has the second ticket drawn out of the pot gets all the money that's in the prize pot, which is probably worth a lot more than the crashpad itself. I personally did not enter, but just wanted to give a shoutout to Halo for winning the cash prize.

Podium placements were divided into difficulty categories and gender. The categories were separated in recreational, novice, intermediate, advanced, and open. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I placed 3rd in Advanced. The prize ribbon is pretty dope, also designed by Cat:

A great design

Overall, the competition is a good way to experience what makes climbing unique is that people of differing ability levels all competing at the same time. It wasn't an uncommon sight to work a boulder problem, brush holds for, or encourage someone twice, or half your age. It's also a good way to catch up with members of the community that you haven't seen in a while. I'm glad to have done it. It was a good break from the projecting process, but I think it's time to go back to it.