Challenges

Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good challenge. Not necessarily a challenge for me to do, but coming up with one for someone else and then insistently bullying them into doing it. Yesterday was another one of those days. Seeing how the weather in Squamish was just shy of boiling, climbing hard projects was near impossible. So we decided to do a points day.

A points day for those who don't know is when you add all your V grades to see how many points you get. i.e. V1 equals one point and so forth. The all time record I've heard of is 307 points in a day without repeating any problems.

Yesterday started off with a bang for me. I had 39 points in under an hour. I was on my way to a decent score, when an old enemy showed up and shut down the day. That's right, my bicep tendinitis is back... Damn!

So instead I spent the next couple hours laying on my back and forcing people into climbing various problems I deemed interesting or exciting. Injury bullying if you want to call it a name.

The points game didn't make it that far what with the scorching hot weather, swelling feet and fingers. So a few hours later everyone had given up on the day and were just hanging out at the black dyke boulder. That's when I decided to throw out an open challenge. How many times could you climb Viper in an hour. I thought 20 would be difficult. But it would get you an unofficial 100 points. No one seemed interested. No matter how much I bullied or used psychological tactics. But finally one guy broke down and decided to give it a go.

T.D. said he'd do it if for nothing else to shut me up about the whole thing and the rest of them could rest in peace. So he started off climbing the problem at an average of 13 seconds a go. I thought he'd slow down but after climbing it exactly the same for the next hour he managed to climb it 60 times with no falls and only one beta change. The rest were almost like I was watching a loop of viper over and over.

Chaulk, bump, cross, grab the lip. Chaulk, bump, cross, grab the lip. Chaulk, bump, cross, grab the lip.

Over and over.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. 60 in an hour. On one of the hottest days in recent memory.

Also 300 points in the quickest possible way...

Though offical points rule states: no repeats.