I recently had the pleasure of judging a regional bouldering competition. Initially I was dismayed at having to get up at six in the morning and travel through a snowstorm to get to the gym, but in the end the experience was really enjoyable and I came away with a few thoughts.
The first is that I really wish I had been able to get into climbing at a younger age! I had tried climbing a few times in my life when I was younger but had never really considered it something I was interested in. I started really climbing when I was out of college at a grain elevator that had been converted into a climbing gym outside Dallas. As far as I know the gym is no longer in business which is awful because the space was amazing and the community around it was even better.
But I digress, the reason I wish I had been able to get into climbing at a younger age is because climbing has taught me a lot. I’ve learned about things ranging from patience, to dealing with stress and pressure, to reverence for nature and conservation. It’s also been an amazing outlet and a great form of exercise both mentally and physically. Had I been more into climbing at a younger age I could have learned these things at an earlier time in my life and been more able to utilize the learnings to better myself.
I’m also now too old to compete in these types of competitions and the whole activity just seems really fun. I think I would have really enjoyed training for these competitions and traveling to different cities to compete with other young athletes.
As a judge there are a wealth of rules that we must know in advance to accurately and fairly judge a climbing competition. There are rules governing how a competitor must behave in-between climbs, how they’re allowed to interact with each other and most importantly how they’re allowed to interact with the wall. Judges have to observe climbers as they attempt each climb and must award them points based on their performance, which is also highly regulated. There’s a concept in competitive climbing called Control which we as judges must use to determine how far into a climb an athlete is able to progress before either finishing the climb or falling off. While there is a specific definition for control, while I was judging the boulder with my partner we would have occasional disagreements about what constituted Control for individual athletes. I was fairly dismayed that such a strictly defined word still left enough room for interpretation that two and even three judges together were still having disagreements when trying to apply said definition.
I recently heard a quote that when we have ideas, there is a dilution of meaning that occurs when we translate those ideas into words, and yet another level of dilution when those words are interpreted by others. There is nothing as pure as the idea as it lives in your head, and sometimes words are inadequate to express the meaning inherit in them.