The Climbing Competiton

This past Saturday I hosted the annual climbing competition at the U of MN. It's a lot of work but always in the end extremely rewarding. It's great to get to spend time with all of the climbing wall staff and work together to put on a great event that all of the climbers we see everyday get to enjoy. I guess it really is the reason why climbing creeps into you and never leaves. Is it the people that are fun to be around, or the activity that keeps you wanting more? Probably a little of both, but climbing is only as fun as the people you are doing it with. In my case, those are almost always good people. Jevidon, as always, was Johnny on the spot with the camera, so click to link to his gallery from the competition.

Climbing seems to breed some type of pack animal mentality. As long as we are together, we feel pretty normal. Put one of us out in the open and we are just obsessed weirdos covered in chalk with abnormally strong hands, good balance and absolutely no fashion sense (my wife dresses me). In the spirit of climbing, some observations I have made in my years enjoying the sport. You might be a climber if:

• You know how to open a beer bottle with a carabiner.
• You don't twist the cap off of beer in fear of damaging the skin on your fingertips for tomorrow's bouldering session
• You own belts, or other clothing accessories, made of retired climbing gear.
• You trim your nails more often than your wife, girlfriend or mother
• You don't have any money for new climbing shoes, but always drink micro brew
• You can name 5 buildings in your neighborhood that would be great to climb
• You've climbed a building before
• You've contemplated how you could build a climbing wall in your rental apartment
• You regularly feel the need to hang from door frames
• You've been asked if Cliffhanger is a good movie more than ten times
• You hate the movie Cliffhanger
• You could kick an eagle scouts ass in a knot tying contest

In other news, we seem to have broken the twenty some days without the temperature getting above freezing, and now it looks like warm weather that will ruin the skiing and ice climbing. Yeah for global warming (smell the sarcasm, please).