Ben, The Least, Climbing for Gold

Saturday Feb 10, I participated in my first wall climbing competition at the YMCA in Andover.  Against my most vigorous protests, I was placed in the "intermediate" category which pitted me against two teenage boys.  (I wanted them to create a "senior pre-novice" category just for me.)  So, there I was, dueling it out with Caleb and Conner.  We had to do 4 climbs, each within 5 minutes, with no sustained resting on the wall.  We got to throw out our weakest climb.  Caleb climbed the wall with out the supports, so, naturally, he ran off with first place with 1400 points Conner and I were evenly matched, and as luck would have it, I edged him out for second place with 325 to 300 points.  The first photo below is at the top of my first climb.  The second photo is at the bottom of my last climb.