Redpoint birthday bash

To celebrate the fourth birthday of the Redpoint climbing wall in Birmingham I headed over in the snow (in sub zero temps) to have join in the fun competitions.  As always over at redpoint everyone was friendly and it was a great atmosphere, and the tea and cake is always good too.

Now I'm not really a fan of dynoing or speed climbing, but it was nice to join in and give them a go, especially as the dyno compeition was on the stalagtite and therefore on belay with no chance of a dodgy landing.

Getting ready to power up

Boom, i managed to stick the hold in the first round but couldn't match the winning 4.3m dyno of Will Smith!

I loved giving the indoor dry tooling ago with the fig fours, a great workout for the forearms and quite balancy - next time i have an ice climbing trip planned these will definitely feature in my training!

Fig four route

The best part of the day was the leading competitions, and although I was a bit dissapointed at barn-dooring off the womens final route (although I still came first) I was pleased with touching the last hold on the mens final route (which made me third).  The route went up a panel to the roof and across the roof via a bridge and couple of stalagtites, the features which make redpoint one of my favourite places to go indoor climbing!

Moving onto the bridge

Past a tricky clip and to move between stalagtites

Couldn't avoid a photo with me pulling a strange face, but in my defence i was pretty pumped at this stage!

Momentarily on the last hold, I thought I had this until...

Popped off, but I'm still smiling :) Great fun

I'm just hoping all the winter indoor training is going to translate onto the rock this year... Three weeks until a big trip to El chorro

Thanks to Matt Todd for providing the photos from the day.