The inaugural Surrey Youth Climbing Festival was held at Craggy Island indoor climbing centre in Guildford on saturday 21st April. The festival is the brainchild of Danielle Rushmer the general manager of the Craggy Island Group, who was herself a regional champion climber as a child. Danie explains, “every year we host the ‘British Youth Climbing Series’ competition at the centre, but outside of our climbing world it has a fairly low profile and yet here are our possible future olympians (climbing will feature as an olympic sport in 2016) competing at the highest level in Guildford. So I built the festival to coincide with the competition so that budding new climbers can be inspired by the fantastic standard of climbing being demonstrated by the regions top young climbers. To enable this we provided 78 places to young people to have an hours instructed climbing for only £5 and a free session to our chosen local charity for the day The Matrix Trust. Their aim, “to facilitate creative projects, cooperative youth work and student work and to help the community in Guildford support young people positively”.

The competition itself attracted the best young climbers from the region from as far afield as Reading, North London and Southampton, attracting a record number of 130 competitors and was coordinated and judged by the British Mountaineering Council. The competition format is based on four age groups each having to complete 3 boulder climbs and 3 route climbs that were designed to increase in difficulty, with points gained depending on how high they managed to climb on each of the problems. All of which were carefully set by Craggy Islands route setter and former world champion boulderer Mark Croxall. Mark said, “the difficulty in setting these type of problems is making the competition fun for the kids but hard enough to really separate who is the best”. The series winners will go onto compete at the nationals to be held in Scotland and possible selection for the British Team. Britain has a strong presence on the international climbing scene with Shauna Coxey narrowly missing out on a medal in 4th place at the world cup bouldering championships held last week in China.

Our local high achievers are Isabelle Adams age 11 years of Guildford  group D 3rd place, Andrew Gee age 14 years of Burpham group B 3rd place and Jack Popplewell 16yrs of Woking (in his 1st competition) group A 2nd place all of whom attended the Craggy Island kids club.

Craggy Island runs kids clubs everyday of the week, after school on weekdays and at various times at weekends. With the term about to start we have a number of spaces left which can be viewed on our website www.craggy-island.com or phone us on 0844 880 88 66 to secure your space.

Andy Gee 3rd place group B

boulder wall

Buster Martin demonstrates the 7b final group A route

another competitor on the final group A route

New climbers having a go at their 1st top rope climb

Jack Popplewell climbing his way to 2nd place in group A

part of the Matrix group enjoying their 1st climbing session

more bouldering

Jim Pope attempts the comp wall

Isabelle Adams receives her 3rd prize from Mark Croxall

On Saturday the 21st April 2012 we will be holding a round of the BMC Youth Climbing Series at our Guildford centre.

We are expecting a large turnout with many parts of the centre being closed all day for competitors only. Some climbing will still be available but please bare this in mind when thinking about climbing here this Saturday. This will also mean that the car park and cafe area will also be very busy.

It looks set to be a great day so feel free to come along and cheer on the competitors as they battle it out up some very challenging climbs.

We apologize for any inconvenience but if you have any questions about the day then please feel free to contact the centre on 0844 880 8866 for more information.

Tags: bmc, Climbing, competiton, craggy, Guildford, island, ycs

It’s that time again and next week it’s the turn of the Rock Room here at Craggy2 for a reset by our lovely set of setters…

Mark ‘locks’ Croxall*

ably assisted by Mike ‘I’m a Pantene man myself’ Hadcocks

As usual they’ll be creating another room full of fiendishly lovely problems across the four days. The room will be closed for public climbing each day until approx 18:30′ish, though we’ll endeavour to get it open asap.

This therefore means it’s the final round of our hotly contested Winter Boulder League on Thursday 26th April – see you there!

Gareth

* Mark ‘may’ have changed his hairstyle since this photo was taken.

Tags: Boulder League, bouldering, Craggy Island, Craggy2, Mark Croxall, new routes, route setting, Sutton, Sutton Bouldering

Both centres will be open over the Easter weekend, but will have a slightly revised opening schedule. This is as follows:

Good Friday (6th April) – 10am – 8pm

Saturday (7th April) - As Normal

Easter Sunday (8th April) – As Normal

Easter Monday (9th April) – 10am – 8pm

We will then be open as normal from Tuesday 10th April.

We also have a wide range of activities going on over the easter holidays for all ages. For more infromation check out the holiday fun news article or contact either centre on 0844 880 8866.

Tags: 2012, Climbing, craggy, Easter, island, opening, times

Round 3 of Craggy2′s ever popular Winter Boulder League took place last night with a fun night of climbing had by all, with the added bonus of the La Sportiva boot demo. It was the usual mix of great success combined with some real ‘sandbags’ across all categories – Dom’s traverse in particular only being completed by a handful of climbers.

So here’s the results:

Well done to all those who took part and we’ve got a provisional date for your diaries of 26.04.2012 for the final round.

Tommy Harris and Darren Stevenson – both of you have prizes to collect from reception!

Gareth ;0)

Tags: Boulder League, bouldering, Climbing, competition, Craggy2, Mark Croxall, Sutton, Sutton Bouldering