Youth Colors - Training Week

We are now well into the trip, 3 days to be precise. We have been non-stop since the Youth Color Climbing Festival in Imst, the kids have barely had time to sit down for a rest! I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that they have certainly been put through their paces training with the Austrians! WOW! Those kids have some endurance! But I think it is starting to rub off on our British kids as they have been looking fitter and fitter by the day... and tonight was probably the peak of the trip.Nathan on classic 6a @ Tumpen (Ötztal)

After a mornings climbing at Tumpen, a fantastic low grades crag in the Ötztal Valley, we headed straight to Kletterhalle Imst where we met up with the Imst Team and their trainer Andy Knabl for our second days training with them. We trained for 3 hours, most of which involved a heavy session doing various styles of endurance based training on lead and top rope, after which we headed outside to the huge competition wall for some hard leads. Connor made an impressive onsight of a Yellow 7a and 7a+, the second of which he was into the roof for the second pitch graded 7b+! David climbed out of his skin despite a very hard days training and even managed to knock out his first 7c onsight, a purple crimp fest that built into a severe overhang on powerful moves and a huge tufa! He then went onto onsight another 7b...

Connor after stripping the 6b+ (That's a lot of quick draws!!!)

Lisa and Nathan have also been making some impressive leaps in performance. Nathan who is mainly a boulderer back home in London has been pushing his endurance threshold and was managing laps on one of his comp routes for the YCCF! Lisa has also made some incredible gains in performance, after having only just been introduced to lead back in March and never having taken any lead falls - on this trip she has been pushing her lead grade to an insane level and has now lead both 6c and taken many lead falls on route graded up to 7b+!!! Not bad for a 9 year old girl :P She has become good friends with a little Austrian girl called Yana, both have been pushing each other and its very nice to see some international friendships being created on this trip.

At Tumpen this morning, Lisa climbed her first ever sport route outside, a classic 6a. David, Connor and Nathan also climbed an amazing 6b+ called "Indian Reservation" and David tried a 6c at the end of the outdoor session. Despite these low grades, the climbs themselves felt very hard - more to do with the style than anything else. I think the rock type is Schist, for the grades I would probably have said the 6b+ felt more like a 7a on Limestone if I'd compared them. I looked at the 7c and couldn't see any holds... scared me silly :P

Yesterday we had a rest day as we had been climbing three days on (two days of competing and a days training with the Imst Team). For a rest day we headed to the mega fun water park called Area 47. This place is just insane, there is so much fun to be had here and I honestly can't wait to go back next year :P We managed to sneak Connor onto some of the bigger rides that required him to be a year older, one of which was a huge water slide with a sled that you lay on your stomach whilst going down. It was mad!!! I also got winded badly doing a huge slide/jump which threw me at least 10m into the air before I landed back first into the water... Pictures to come :P

There was also a pretty cool climbin wall, bouldering wall and a pillar of the bridge that Hansjorg Auer had bolted and climbed. We where all interested to try these fun looking routes but we hadn't brought our climbing kit with us... The receptionist told us that only Hansjorg has climbed these :P

Tomorrow we are climbing again outside in the morning, then heading to the wall for another training session with the Imst Team, after which we will probably hit the Outdoor wall again :D PSYCHED! Oh yeah, Nat and I have also been enjoying the Imst wall climbing - I have onsighted the two hardest routes from the competition both which were 7c+, onsighted three 8a's on the big competition wall outside and managed an onsight of an 8a+ on the competition wall outside as well. The crazy thing with Imst wall is the volume at which they set routes... every 2 weeks every climb in the main hall on the main sections of wall are changed... so basically every 2 weeks there will be a new set of around 20 x routes from 7b to 8c... The last set included around 8 routes 8b and harder! Thats one reason why all the climbers here are so good :P

Connor psyched after achieving 7a+ onsight at Kletterhalle Imst!

David Psyched after achieving his first 7c insight!