11/28/2018
Today I thought I would share how I started my route setting career.
After about a year of climbing, I found something that would change my climbing experience forever. That thing was route setting, the act of putting up holds in a specific route. The art of teaching and forcing others to do a movement on a rock wall is just some of the great things about route setting. There was a lot of hard work that I put in before getting to put my first hold on at the Source. My journey to becoming a route setter is a story of pestering, patience, and practice.
It all started for me with climbing on my brother and sister in law's home wall, which at the time was only an 8x8 flat wall with not many holds to choose from. That first time on their wall showed me how much fun it is to make routes on a rock wall. A few months later I helped them make a better, much bigger version of their home wall. Featuring a 22-degree overhang, corner feature and a slightly bigger flat wall connected. Little did I know this wall was going to be where most of my countless hours practicing my setting skills would take place.
However, when I went to Portland Boulder Rally for the first time in October 2017 and watched the pro finals live in person right next to the pads. That is when my passion for route setting took another BIG step up. After that competition, I contacted my local gym co-owner and head route setter and ended up setting up to meet with him the next time I came in the gym. The talk didn't go quite how I expected it to go, I thought I was a pretty strong climber and thought I might be able to set pretty soon. However, that is not how it went, he told me he loved my passion for route setting and told me about route setting a little bit and what it takes to be a route setter. One of the main things I needed to work on was my weight. I wasn't overweight to most people but to be a route setter and to climb hard enough to be able to set hard routes for others I had 10-15 pounds to lose, he told me. I wasn't deterred, I became determined.
So from that day forward, I switched my eating, started working out and kept my goal of losing weight for route setting and climbing harder in the front of my mind. Not even a month later I had lost 17 pounds and a few weeks later I lost 29 pounds! After the weight loss, I was ready to work on training and my technique to get to the climbing level I needed to get to. After a solid month of training 3-4 days a week with other exercises and activities on non-climbing days. I had climbed my first V8 and V9! Which was definitely a result of the weight loss and training.
During that time of losing weight and training hard. I had built a small garage rock climbing wall to practice my taping skills and the basics of route setting at my house whenever I had time. So almost every day I would go out to my little 8x8 flat wall and set a new route and then when completely filled I would try all the routes and tweak as needed. I learned lots from this small wall about holds, bolts, taps, drills, wrenches and so much more about route setting. Things you can't learn without hands-on experience.
To read the rest of the story. It's on my blog here
After about a year of climbing, I found something that would change my climbing experience forever. That thing was route setting, the act of putting up holds in
