Thornton – The lime-green plastic hold at the top of the overhanging route looked bomber from the bottom. It wasn’t.
“When I got closer, I saw it was huge sloper,” said Zeb Engberg, a 20-year-old professional rock climber from Massachusetts. “I tried to slap it hard. It was kind of scary.”
The tricky green hold – mere inches from the top of the hardest route at Rock-n & Jam-n, the Thornton climbing gym that last weekend hosted the prestigious biennial North American Continental Climbing Championships – sent Engberg flying. But Canadian rock phenom Sean McColl found traction somewhere on that downward sloping hold and swung to victory.
“I was a little nervous at first. I thought the hardest part was the bottom,” said the 19-year-old McColl, who in August won the world competition in Austria for both speed and lead climbing for his age group. “But I got into my momentum, and the top was really fun.”
Boulder’s Emily Harrington easily won the women’s open competition, solidifying her international reputation as North America’s strongest competitive rock climber. The lithe 20-year-old won the North American Continental Climbing Championship in Mexico City in 2004, and in July won the European Invitational at Serre-Chevalier, France.
“I felt all right today. Just all right,” said the senior from CU, who will graduate next May with a degree in international affairs. “I had a big Thanksgiving dinner. The route was awesome, though.”
Harrington and McColl were the top-ranked climbers coming into the weekend competition, and they were the only climbers to flash the hardest routes in the final comp Saturday. That means the route setting – the difficult task of aligning and sequencing holds in such a way to challenge even the best – was dead on.
“It could not have worked more perfectly,” said chief course setter Kevin Branford, from Colorado Springs, who ranked the men’s route as a “hard” 5.13. “These are the best climbers on the continent and the routes played to the strength of the very best.”
Almost 190 competitors from Mexico, Canada and the United States competed in 19 age divisions in the two-day, internationally sanctioned competition.
The young climbers competed in two disciplines: sport climbing and speed climbing. In sport, competitors are kept in isolation until moments before they start climbing, eliminating the benefit of watching early climbers negotiate the tricky routes. In speed, the climbers race up a 37-foot course at speeds close to what it would take to run the same distance.
The sport routes are set the day before, and climbers are given a quick glimpse of the lines, but are not allowed to see anyone climbing the sequence of plastic holds. In the sport competition, climbers aim to reach the top but also are awarded points for following particular sequences perfectly. Some of the holds are arranged to mislead climbers into following a sequence that will leave their arms and legs tangled, their balance askew.
Ben Schmitt learned that the hard way. The 19-year-old from Colorado Springs competed in the junior level – just one below the open, or professional, category – and finished second to U.S. Climbing teammate Ben Spannuth by three-tenths of a point, despite reaching the same hold as Spannuth.
“I guess it had something to do with my balance at a particular point in my climb. Maybe the way I moved,” Schmitt said. “There are certain sequences, and the point of a route could be to mislead you and mess up a sequence.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
