DUBLIN, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - Last weekend saw an invasion, not from those Welsh rugger types, but in the form of 100+ climbers who descended on Dublin for the Irish Climbing Intervarsities. This year the competition was hosted by DCU, with the bouldering element taking place at their college wall and the leading section in Westwood Sports Centre in Clontarf.

The route setters certainly made things interesting for the first day by putting together some tough problems. The competition followed the format of the Irish Bouldering League but one problem broke from this by allowing as many tries as the competitors desired. This longer problem proved very popular, only seeing one clean ascent on the easier beginners version and another close miss on the advanced version. The day ended with good point separation between the females and with the points very close for the males with the leaders in Male A, Female A, Male B and Female B being John Orr, Joan Mulloy, Jason Slevin and Deirdre Cormican respectively.

The leading competition started a bit behind schedule, partly due to everyone feeling a little ropey (yes I did just say that!) after the mandatory night out in the Turks Head the night before. John Orr started the second day off with an impressive clean ascent of what turned out to be the hardest route for the day, a feat no one else would manage to achieve. Jane Gallwey missed the first day but after a great performance on her two leads pulled herself up into 3rd place in Female A. The four routes for the day were enjoyed by all, with many people eager for a second try once the competition finished. The two advanced categories top three were left with comfortable leads once the final scores were added up, with the beginners categories still being close.

After the first day QUBC were ahead in the overall club scores and on the second day they managed to slightly increase their lead to win the Irish Climbing Intervasities for the second year running. They received the first prize of a boulder mat along with the trophy/gravestone which I’m sure they’ll enjoy having to carry back up to Belfast, although there was some complaints from the members that had to carry it down on Friday.

Overall the competition was a success and everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves. We’re all looking forward to next year in Limerick! Of course none of this would have been possible without our sponsors Berghaus, Patagonia, Specsavers, Great Outdoors, 53 Degrees North and Brennan’s Bread. We would also like to thank all our route setters and our volunteers from Westwood Fitness Club who put in a lot of their own time to make this competition possible.

Of course no report would be complete without the results so I’ve added them below. The complete results are available here.
For anyone who was involved and wants to get involved in a discussion on the event, don’t forget TGU boards, or else hit the forum on said topic on climbing.ie!

• Male A - 1. John Orr (QUBC), Damien O’Sullivan (TCD), 3. Richie Sandes (DIT)
• Female A - 1. Joan Molloy (NUIG), 2. Mary Moloney (GMIT Castlebar), 3. Jane Gallwey (TCD)
• Male B - 1. Jason Slevin (QUBC), 2. Colm Shannon (UL), 3. Owen Largey (QUBC)
• Female B - 1. Deirdre Cormican (GMIT), 2. Jade O’Mahony (NUIG), 3.Barbara Bracko (DCU)”

- Stephen McGowan & Ailish Grennan -

(Image Credit: Jonathon Mullen & Nicole Quinn)

I received an email from Claire MacLeod to let me know about the inaugural Slacklining Masters, which will be held in Fort William, Scotland, “will be kicking off at 12pm on Saturday 23rd February at the Lochaber Leisure Leisure Centre playing fields with the Grand Final at 4pm.” Dust off your slacklines, tie them off to some trees, and get practicing!
It’s being held as part of the Fort William Mountain Festival (running from 14th - 23rd February) which seems to have a pile of events running throughout the week.

Entry is free, and the “entry forms are now available to download here ” (Warning: pdf)

“The cash prizes for the comp are now totaling a whopping two grand.
UK Champion = £500
UK 2nd place = £300
UK 3rd place = £200
International Champion = £500
International 2nd place = £300
International 3rd place = £200″
Check out Claire’s post here and I’m sure you’ll want to subscribe to keep an eye out for more updates.

- Neal :) -

NEWBRIDGE, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - The 2nd round of the Irish Bouldering League took place last weekend at St. Colmans Secondary School (Google Maps), Midleton, Co. Cork.

With about an estimated 120 climbers competing, in one very cramped room, you can guarantee it made for a social and friendly encounter. Other than some ‘vague’ route grading - not my words! - from the route-setters, it seems no one could really find anything to complain about (unless you count being stiff and sore the next day as something to complain about :). Still though, with a decent spread of points at the top of each group, it meant that obviously the routes were difficult enough to challenge everybody. Unfortunately, I’m only getting over a shoulder injury so wasn’t competing but it looked like a great comp.

the full results can be found on climbing.ie here, but in short congrats to Harry Fogg in the Males, Joan Mulloy in the Females, and Ciaran Rogers in the Juniors. Solid climbing from it all from what I saw!

More photos can be found in my gallery here (or the slide-show below), and even more through the climbing.ie forums

Update: Image Credit: Damien O’Sullivan climbing one of the harder competition problems at Midleton, Co. Cork

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“He jumped from 40,000ft without a parachute…” Know the lyrics? Travis Pastrana does! This Moto Cross rider (world famous for performing backflips on a motorbike) has jumped out of a plane wearing only his boxers and holding a can of Red Bull. No Parachute!

In the promotional stunt, after getting the required film footage his dive crew ’soared’ over to him and attached his hidden harness to a chute in free-fall and pulled the cord. Nice! How much could have gone wrong with this one?! Story via Goblog I think.

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TrackMyJourney.co.uk apparently a great tool for GPS linkage to your mobile phone. Must run a test myself!

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Outdoor bloggers Rock & Ice writing competition. Neal & Dave, boys you should enter this with your stories!

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Video of MAX Adventure (Fiennes cancelled trip due to funding) and the landrovers they were using that had modified wheel bases to take tracks on them. Very cool vehicles for Ice work.

1997 - Wales, Alaska. Reconnaissance of the Bering Strait to establish the feasibility of driving across the sea-ice from Russia to Alaska. This was part of a bigger project to drive around the world from the west of Ireland to the east of Newfoundland, to celebrate Land Rover’s 50th anniversary. Led by the renowned explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the project was cancelled due to costs.

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Project your GPS speed onto your windscreen
for a real HUD (Heads Up Display) system like out of Star Wars.

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Have an amazing weekend!

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - The International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) held their Climbing world cup in Japan over the weekend.

Tomas Mrazek (CZE) and Maja Vidmar (SLO) won Gold. I didn’t see an Irish or UK team in the results. Odd? It appears neither country is a member, I wonder is there reason behind this?

On January 27th 2007, the IFSC was born when 48 National Federations voted to create the new International Federation to govern Competition Climbing. The IFSC is a continuation of the International Council for Competition Climbing (ICC) which has been in existence since 1997.

Reuters had a photographer at the event and posted a gallery of the action today.

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Dates for the annual Irish Bouldering League (IBL) have been announced for the 2007 & 2008 competition.

Round 1: NUI Galway, Saturday November 3rd 2007

Round 3: DCU, Dublin, Saturday January 12th 2008

The league will be based on participants best 2 results. 4 categories: Open A, Female, Male B, Junior.

To add some extra interest, mini outdoor bouldering meets on the Sunday after the competitions.

Sunday November 4th, Doolin.
Sunday December 2nd, Douglas Crag or Rocky Bay
Sunday January 13th, Portrane or Glendalough

More information is usually found on climbing.ie

-Robin-

(Image Credit: Dave Stacey’s Flickr Account. Thanks Dave.)

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Have you ever seen a cooler shirt? The London Rat Race draws near for ‘Team Geared Up’. If you see a threesome running, cycling, kayaking & climbing around London in bright red shirts next weekend you know it’s us. The team with the reflective panels on their chests hoping to blind the competition.

These shirts arrived in for us today and I’m only delighted. They are super. I now need to order them for all my great bloggers to wear, you guys deserve it. The only problem is, I need to get Aisling’s logo on her back as none of the other runners will see it if she keeps coming 1st in all these races! It’s an interesting topic of discussion… Neal wants his logo on his back for climbing photos, where the climber is often face on to the wall. I’d want my logo on my front as I usually have a pack on - and it’ll be hidden and/or rub off. Where’s the best place to have an outdoor logo?

Competition: We need a really snappy cool tagline to print on the reverse side to the logo. Submit your entries here, and we’ll give a copy of the t-shirt to any reader who submits one we pick & print ourselves.

I’m thinking of something like: “If you can read this, I’ve lost my rucksack…”.

(Any readers actually want a t-shirt, seriously? I need a brand/company/shop to put their logo on the back and cover the costs for 100 t-shirts for our best 100 readers. Any takers?)

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - It’s time to announce our very own TGU blogger ‘Aisling Coppinger‘ has been selected to race for Ireland at the European Mountain Running Championships at Cauterets in France next weekend (July 8th 2007).

We’re all immensely proud of her achievement and honored to have Aisling blogging as a key member of Team Geared Up. Aisling - thanks for all your hard efforts over the last few months and a serious bit of encouragement is going your way for the weekend!

Aisling just announced the achievement on her blog when her green Irish strip arrived.

The Irish womens team and race numbers are:

132 IRL COPPINGER AISLING
133 IRL MAXWELL FIONA
134 IRL SHANNON ALWYNNE
135 IRL SLOAN TRICIA

Good luck Aisling! I’m sure our readers will be backing you all the way.

-Robin-