Last Saturday Pete, Anna and I headed over to Aviemore for the 3rd round of the Scottish Drytooling Series. Waking up at 5:50am I rolled out of bed, got my stuff and headed downstairs where Pete and Anna would pick me up. We got across feeling surprisingly awake had a look at the routes and tried to teach Pete all he needed to know about drytooling as he had never done it before. We listened to the briefing and then started on the routes. Pete was psyched to go first as he thought he had nothing to lose and he could tell myself and Anna where the good bits on the holds were.
The qualifiers ran for about 3 hours in this time there was 2 boulder problems one of which was a figure four fest along a long horizontal campus board and another involving swinging logs. There was also 9 top roped routes involving a mixture of laybacks, stein pulls, swinging axes into logs and even a crack made out of wooden beams that you needed to torque!!!!
At about 1pm the qualifiers ended. By this point my lack of sleep had caught up with me. I was starting to feel really tired and wasn't looking forward to the final route. Big stein pulls up to the roof then leading across the whole disorientating length of the roof!
The finalists were called out Anna was currently in first place after the qualifiers but had very close competition in Fiona Murry. Fiona went first getting very far along the roof and along with her commentary on how hard it was I think Anna was getting a bit nervous. Fiona fell about two thirds of the way along the roof, up next was Anna. Anna looked impressive but fell just short of Fiona to come 2nd.
In the mens comp Pete and I also made it in to the final. Not too bad as Pete had never tried it before. Pete went first out of the two of us feeling tired after the qualifiers he didn't look forward to the start which involved a couple of strenuous lock off moves to get to the roof. He got to the top had a little shake out then preceded onto the roof looking strong until he got confused, clipped the wrong quickdraw and couldn't correct it. He fell soon after although happy he got further then Anna. 
As Pete untied I walked over to see what he thought as I was next up. He told me the worst part was the start then for the roof you just had to keep going till you couldn't hold on anymore. I managed to get slightly further than Pete and then fell off landing me in 3rd place and Pete in 4th.
I'll let you know how we get on at the final 2 comps so keep checking the blog for more stories and pics!!!
Results were in; Ashley was joint 2nd with Robert Mackenzie, and therefore through to the finals! An awesome effort given that there were 23 strong competitors in his category! I also made it through to the finals in 1st place, for the first time ever ahead of Fiona Murray! The final route involved a no hands start which was a true test of balance. The route went left via some swinging logs, and then up the wall to the right of ratho’s “Sardinian pillar”. It was a fun-filled day, and an exhausting weekend! We are looking forward to the next round already :) (big thanks to Katherine for taking all the photos).
I've been working away at more additions for the climbing wall. The picture above shows the larger of the efforts. It's a curved section that will be used on the bouldering wall and on the main wall at competitons. It measures about 8 feet by 4 feet and is going to be awsome wherever it is put.
