5.10 Climbing Competition

Good news: Stephen's a champion climber now! We went to a beautiful, beautiful place called Cheoncheon in middle-northern Korea where the 5.10 climbing gear brand hosted a national competition. It was on May 10, a Tuesday that we didn't have to work, because it was also a national holiday. Eight of the folks from our gym, including Stephen, got to compete. It was a great, great day!!

It was rainy, so Derek and Ashley had to stay home. :( But the weather was surprisingly good for such an event. The climbers never got too hot, and there was enough cover that they didn't get wet on the walls. And, you know, the rest of us had umbrellas. Also, when we arrived at 6-something in the morning, it looked like we were floating in an abyss on a giant concrete object with climbing walls and tents. It gradually started clearing up and I began to see that we were actually surrounded by mountains.

I'm kind of ashamed of my lack of proficiency with the Korean language. However, I can read this:

suh-tee-bun

Incheon Climbing Center

(get it? suh-tee-bun--> Stephen :D)

Here he is!

This is our friend Hyung-Saup. Hyung Saup is awesome. Like everyone at the gym, he's really sweet and good-natured. He laughed SO hard when I jokingly asked if I could try one of the harder climbs, and then laughed even harder at the prospect of me doing such a climb in my rubber yellow rainboots.

Oh, these rainboots.

I did get to participate in this event of the competition. It's such an awesome, awesome game! I took video while Stephen was playing. BTW, it's way harder than it looks, and most of the teams kind of sucked at it. Except, of course, as you can see, our team :) Another great non-climbing event the teams got to play was jump roping. Two climbers held either end of the rope while the other 6 had to run in and jump one at a time. I loved watching people on this event. They loved it! Everyone had such a goofy, giant grin on their faces while they did it :)

Mid-afternoon beer and anju (beer snacks) time was super fun. This is a great group of people. I wish you could meet them.

Especially our Sabonim. This is a really solid guy. We didn't find out until sort of recently, but he's the owner of the gym, and also some kind of wicked-crazy-good climber. He's a national champion. And a big proponent of the empty-beer-can-chair.

The speed climbing event was really, really fun to watch. It didn't seem to matter if the climber was any good, it was just a matter of the belayers pulling the rope as hard as they could, sometimes two or three of them. Stephen got to help!

Here we are accepting the first place prize. The gym got a trophy, that crazy yellow thing, and all the players get a chalk bag and climbing shoes. Everyone was so excited! I was really proud. :)

Here are some videos I took:

This is the game I was talking about earlier!