Bouldering | Bonuel Photography

Jan

23

Tour de Bloc 9: Climber’s Rock

Last weekend’s Tour de Bloc was a lot of fun! It was also full of surprises. First of all, even though the field was super strong, two returning veterans of the Tour de bloc scene (Dave Voltan and Gary Posey) managed to clinch a spot in the finals, while one of my favourites and a regular finalist (Seb Lazure) just missed finals by 8 points. Matt Moreau is a new force in the Tour this year and he showed up and took 3rd place (eking out ahead of Eric Sethna by 2 attempts). In fact, the men’s final ranking was very close – and all about attempts. Fred Charron repeated his amazing performance at the last Tour de Bloc, finishing in 2nd place (1 attempt ahead of Matt). And, in a throw-back to the old days – Rockhead‘s team member and G6 representative Dave Voltan came out on top by finishing 3 final problems in only 4 attempts (one fewer than Fred)! Congrats buddy!

For the ladies, the field was also big (about 40 competitors!), including none other than Thomasina Pidgeon from out west and a whole group of super strong women! Every year the women’s field gets stronger and more impressive! Iyma Lamarche continues to impress on the Tour scene, taking her first win (yep, she beat Thomasina by 7 attempts). Way to go Iyma! Unfortunately, I didn’t get any decent pictures of the women’s finals .

Congrats to Voltan and Iyma for their amazing performance at the Climber’s Rock competition! Here are a few photos of the men’s finals!

Fred on problem #2 and #3.

Matt on problem #2.

Eric on problme #4.

Here are the official final results:

Women’s Finals:

Iymma Lamarche (4/6 & 4/6)
Thomasina Pidgeon (4/13 & 4/11)
Kerry Briggs (3/5 & 4/7)
Kacy Wilson (2/2 & 2/2)
Marieta Akalski (2/4 & 3/5)
Su En Neo (1/1 & 3/4)
Amanda Berezowski (1/2 & 3/8)
Kaska Kowalska (0/0 & 3/11)

Men’s Finals:

Dave Voltan (3/4 & 3/4)
Fred Charron (3/5 & 3/4)
Mathew Moreau (3/6 & 4/5)
Eric Sethna (3/6 & 4/7)
Keith Mackay (3/6 & 3/6)
John Bowles (3/8 & 4/12)
Gary Posey (2/7 & 3/8)
Jo Skopec (1/3 & 2/3)

A few more pics:

Posted by Miguel | 6 comments

Nov

07

Tour de Bloc 9: Joe Rockhead’s

Rock Climbing / Tour de Bloc

This past saturday was the first competition of the 9th Tour de Bloc season and the first thing I noticed was how big the women’s field was compared to other years (about 35 open competitors)! I found that to be a real good indicator of the tour’s success and the popularity of bouldering in Canada, which is exciting to witness.

This competition also proved to be interesting because there were so many new faces to the finals! My two favourite competitors to watch on Saturday were Kacy Wilson and Fred Charron. They both put up super impressive performances, gave it their all, and showed that they are real contenders for the number one spot. Also, I particularly enjoyed women’s and men’s 3rd problem, because of their very intricate beta reminiscing of the European-style problems we are used to seeing on the World Cup series (Thank you Tonde!). It’s unfortunate that no one could manage to finish men’s third problem, but great fun nonetheless!

Read More» Posted by Miguel | 5 comments

Nov

03

Tour de Bloc 9: Let the pulling begin!

Rock Climbing / Tour de Bloc

Tour de bloc 9 begins this weekend at our favorite local gym: Joe Rockhead’s. Today, I was lucky enough to get a preview of the final problems for the comp this weekend. Brace yourselves! It really is looking like this competition will be one of the best we’ve seen out east! It surely will set the tone for the rest of this year’s tour de bloc. Hope you all can make it!!

As I promised many of you, here is a sneak peek of the finals problem:

Posted by Miguel | 0 comments

Jul

02

IFSC World Cup, Canmore 2011: Best Of

IFSC / Rock Climbing

Tsukura stikking the final hold, after many tries. That put him

Je vais ecrire cet article seulement en Anglais cette fois-ci. Trop de texte, pas assez de temps. Allez voir les photos en bas quand meme. Ca vaut la peine! Bonne journee!

Sorry folks – i’ve been keeping the best photos for last and i’ve been super lazy at writing on my blog!! At first, I didn’t really intend to keep them from everybody, but because I had sent a bunch of shots to magazines, I didn’t feel comfortable to share them here just yet. Now that I have heard back from the magazines and I think that the time has come. And frankly, I now finally have time to write on the blog.

Before sharing the pics (down below if you don’t want to read), I wanted to take notes of my experience in Canmore and share a little bit (if you care to read this stuff). For those who don’t know, the Canmore World Cup was the first ever IFSC Bouldering World Cup event in Canada, which is a huge step forward for the sport in Canada! For me, as a wannabe sport photographer, it was a really exciting opportunity to further my skill set for competition climbing photography and, also, frankly, to have the best seat in the house to watch the world’s best climbers compete for the first Canadian Bouldering World Cup title. I learned a lot during the weekend in Canmore and I definitively had the best seat in the house to watch the show. I don’t usually do this on the site, but here are some of the technical difficulties I ran into for this shoot.

Technically speaking, the competition and the venue was quite challenging. First of all, the weather didn’t really cooperate with the us; It rained, snowed, and was pretty cold in general (we even had a 3°C snowy day!). Like someone said, Canmore offered the spectators and competitors four seasons in one weekend. Secondly, because of the heavy clouds, the light inside the tent was pretty low, which forced me to push the low light capacities of my D300 by shooting at ISO 2200 with a f/2.8 lens. Thanks to my friend Blaire for lending me his super sharp Nikon lens (17-55mm f/2.8) the pictures turned out to be pretty nice and sharp anyways! It truly is an AWESOME lens!

I arrived at the venue on Thursday, when the route setters were testing the qualification boulder problems. I was able to meet the other official photographer, Pam Eveleigh, the organizer Dung and a few other people. I also got my media pass, which basically allowed me to go anywhere on site and take photos of basically anything i wanted. Before showing up, I was really concerned about the media pass, because I know that the IFSC is normally quite strict as to who gets to go where. Thankfully – i had the green light. At first, the general rule was to have no one stand at the top of the wall, which again had me worried a little bit (I hadn’t brought any long lenses), but, thankfully, the organizer gave us the “okay” to shoot from above, making our lives much more simple. The only restriction was that we needed to build ladders behind the wall to make things safer and easier to climb up the wall. Trust me, even with the little ladders, making your way around the beams and looking for nails at the back of the wall was a challenge in itself. I was super sore the next day!

Enough for now. By the way, if you haven’t seen them yet, check out my previous posts (n’oubliez pas de regarder mes autres articles sur la coupe du monde de Canmore):

* click an image for larger size (cliqué sur une image pour la voir en grand format).

Posted by Miguel | 2 comments

Jun

05

IFSC World Cup, Canmore 2011: Finals

IFSC / Rock Climbing

Finally, some of the pictures from the finals in Canmore. If you haven’t seen them yet, check out my previous posts (n’oubliez pas de regarder mes autres articles sur la coupe du monde de Canmore):

Enfin des photos des finales de la Coupe du Monde de Canmore!

* click an image for larger size (cliqué sur une image pour la voir en grand format).