Quickdraw Climbing Comp a HUGE success

On Saturday, April 4, 2009, we held our annual USA Sport Climbing Competition - this one entitled the "QUICKDRAW." The staff, volunteers and even a few climbers donned western wear as part of the western theme.

We hosted over 100 climbers (102 to be exact) and this was our largest turnout for a competition in the gym's history! We had climbers from as far away as Iowa travel to test their meddle on our endurance-fest routes.

Nearly every route in the gym was overhauled for the competition. We had routes of varying difficulty from about 5.6 to as hard as 5.13+. Most routes got climbed - only a handful remain projects for another day.

The highlight of the day was the unveiling of a new roof route line that traversed the room 270 degrees before heading up 90 feet and across the ceiling. The total length of the line: 140 ft. And though the rope drag for the last clip was insane, 2 climbers; Delaney Miller in the female Youth B category and Shane Puccio in the male Youth B category battled to the end to complete the climb.

Official results are not yet posted on the USA Climbing website but will be posted HERE when they are.

We need to give a huge thanks to all the competitors and parents who traveled long distances to visit our gym and participate. We truly appreciate your support and all of the positive feedback we received about the gym. We've put SO much work into it and nothing makes it more worthwhile to us than to witness climbers having a good time and hearing how much they love the place - so thank you again.

And thank you to our dedicated volunteers - we could not have done this without you and we truly appreciate the time you contributed to belaying and judging.

Thank you so much to our hard-working staff who worked cohesively and tirelessly to make the day go as planned. With an event of this caliber it takes an amazing team of self-driven people working together to make it happen and that's what we have.

Thank you VERY much to all of our sponsors who donated raffle prizes, holds, coffee, etc. These sponsors include: Dirtbag Outfitters, Three Ball Climbing, Liberty Mountain, eGrips, Trabgo, PMI Ropes, eVolv, HippyTree, Organic Climbing, Petzl, Princeton Tec, Rock & Ice, Starbucks Coffee, prAna, Backwoods, Avid Climbing, Summit Co. in Edmond, Mountain Hardwear, AustriAlpin, Smith Optics, Black Diamond, SoILL, Climbing Magazine, and Urban Climber Magazine. All of the proceeds from the raffle go to Touchstone Youth Project - our non-profit organization that has Rocktown as its home. Also thanks to Beatnix Cafe in OKC for setting up a lunch table and making sandwiches available.

Last but not least - thank you to our incredible team of routesetters. It takes a lot of time to set creative and challenging competition routes at the gym and we appreciate your efforts. We received an array of positive feedback from climbers and parents about the routes.

I honestly don't know how we would top the competition we had this year but we have an entire year to think about it so we'll see what we come up with.

In the meantime - enjoy the new routes - they'll be up for a little while!

Thanks,
Aaron Gibson