The Bouldering World Cup in Vail is always one of my favorite events of the year.  The competition is part of a larger event, formerly known as the Teva Mountain Games, now known as the GoPro Mountain Games.  I remember the days when the competition at the Teva Games was held on a small mushroom-shaped boulder in a parking lot, so it is pretty neat to see how much the event has grown over the years.  Now, the World Cup attracts an incredibly strong field of competitors from various countries.  

In the final competition of the year Mina Markovic (SLO) and Sachi Amma (JPN) clinched their titles as the world‘ best Lead climbers in 2012. Slovenia’s Lead queen fixed her second success in a row with place 1 in Kranj, the men’s stage victory went to Jakob Schubert (AUT), fledgling winner of the Overall World Cup 2012 (Lead, Speed, Boulder).A long, thrilling, diversified and successful sport climbing year 2012 is now history. With the last competition in Kranj (SLO) from November 17th-18th the last decisions in the IFSC World Cup were made – and that in a quite gripping...

Earlier this month, the IFSC Lead World Cup kicked off its American debut of the season in Atlanta, Georgia. I qualified for this event by making the finals at the SCS Open Nationals a few months ago, making this my 3rd World Cup appearance. Having performed well enough to qualify for the semifinals the year before, my hopes were high in terms of improving my result and potentially having a shot at making it into finals. Training for this year's World Cup required a much different approach than I was normally used to, considering my full engineering...

Last April I competed in the my first SCS Open National Championship at Movement Climbing Gym in Boulder, CO. Bouldering is my first love- I’ve participated in ABS Open Nationals since I was eligible- but I never made the effort to get to SCS Nationals until this year. To my surprise, I qualified for the World Cup being held in Atlanta the weekend of September 29 and 30. Since the competition was being held at Stone Summit, my new home gym, I was pretty happy to have the opportunity to participate. I have to admit, I do not get...

Through my whole season of Downhill racing this year I have had some amazing ups and downs. I started off with a whole schedule of races with the backing of a great team. As the season went on things were changing and turning in the opposite direction. At one point I realized that I may not be able to finish out the season as I had planned out. However I was fortunate enough to have the greatest friends and family to step in and sponsor me for the rest of the season. I was...

I am travelling a lot lately! And I like it! I was in Squamish for one month this summer and had a super good time with a bunch of my friends. It was my 4th summer there and I managed to climb some projects of my own. I started my trip by trying the crimpy test piece When Harry Met. A v12 problem consisting of only few moves on super thin holds. It gave me some trouble since it’s not a type of problem I’m use to do. After trying it for a couple sessions I had...