5 Onsight Routes for the Challenge of the Week

This week's challenge of the week was to set 5 routes, each with a different style all at the same grade. I took this opportunity to encourage all the climbers at the CAVE to treat them as on-sight practice routes. All of the routes would be completely new to each of the climbers and would only be up for the night. It was like a mini-competition against yourself to on-sight as many routes as possible.

I barely managed to set five routes. After the extended basics setting clinic from Sunday (which you will eventually be able to read about), there just were not enough bolts readily available. Finding footchips to use was incredibly difficult. We'll hopefully get more bolts of the reasonable length soon (we were seriously hoping for some huge holds -- we'll get them one day). After setting a bunch of routes with bolts that were just a bit too long, I managed to find enough time to finish a school related project and make comment sheets for climbers to fill out. I actually felt really successful, since I had gotten a bunch of people to fill stuff out until I realized that I had forgotten to take the pictures of the routes that had been up for less than a day. 

Since I forgot to take pictures, I have made color coded tables in order for this to be more visually appealing. It didn't work that well. 

Route Name: Red

Intended Grade: V2

Average Grade: V2 (Or a really hard V1)

Moves Incorporated: Lay Back, Rose, Match, Gaston

Types of Holds Used: Slopers, Crimps and Pinches

From memory, what I remember from this route is that the start is a layback into a large and slightly positive edge. From there, the climber does a rose move into another edge large enough to easily match on it gets a little ladder for about two holds and then it's a nice gaston to the top.

Route Name: Yellow

Intended Grade: V2

Average Grade: V2

Moves Incorporated: Bump, Deadpoint, Undercling

Types of Holds Used: Crimps, Jugs

My favorite part about this route is that I found an awesome jug that when flipped over made a decent crimp and could then be used as an undercling. A lot of bumps happened. 

Route Name: Green

Intended Grade: V2

Average Grade: V2 (Or another really hard V1)

Moves Incorporated: Cross, Lay Back

Types of Holds Used: Jugs and Positive Pinches

Except for the beginning the route focused on hand over hand laybacks while walking feet up the wall. The Beginning started with a slightly balancey cross that required a decent core. 

Route Name: Blue

Intended Grade: V2

Average Grade: V1

Moves Incorporated: Bump, Mantle, Cross

Types of Holds Used: Pinches, Jugs, Edges

The route started on the boob and I made it pretty easy for fear that edges may be too challenging. Unfortunately, this turned out in the average grade being a V1 and two people listing it as a V0. It can definitely be difficult to fit with the consensus. Sometimes when you forerun a route, it just feels like it is hard enough for a certain difficulty when it isn't. I definitely set the farthest away from the intended grade on this route. 

Route Name: Purple

Intended Grade: V2

Average Grade: V2

Moves Incorporated: Hand-Foot Match, Undercling

Types of Holds Used: Jugs

This route was very dynamic without forcing deadpoints or dynos. The same style holds that I used in purple penguin were used in this route. I really wanted to force heel hooks on these holds, but a lot of climbers in the CAVE borrow shoes and since they don't really size them correctly, we have a lot of shoes with squished heels that don't work for heel hooks. Instead, I ended up forcing a hand foot match at the start and a long move from an undercling. 

Overall, this was pretty successful. I hit the target grade for 4/5 of the problems and the grade for the 5th is debatable and easily adjustable by simply getting rid of a foot or moving it else where. Next time I do this, I will hopefully remember to take pictures.

Questions, comments, and other combinations of letters, spaces, and punctuation go below.