Jan

23

Tour de Bloc 9: Climber’s Rock

Rock Climbing / Tour de Bloc
Dave Voltan on problem #3

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:

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

Men’s Finals:

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

 

A few more pics:

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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!

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Oct

30

Pemberton 2011: Volunteers, THANK YOU!

Personal
The gang

Over the past month or so, I shared many pictures from my trip back to Pemberton. The hope was to convey the beauty of both peaks, Cassioppe and Saxifrage, as well as to help friends and family understand the type of area that need to be searched for Jon and Rachael. But in reality, this whole search effort and trip on the mountain wouldn’t have happened without the help and support of countless volunteers. This trip, and the whole experience, made us realize how lucky we are to be surrounded by the most amazing people. We have the privilege to know so many people that offered their help and their support to us without asking anything in return. We are blessed with amazingly generous and selfless friends and families. It was showed by the sheer amount of people donating to our cause and by the number of people volunteering to come and help for the searches of August 2011. Obviously, a simple “thank you” is not enough, but this is where it starts for me. While on the mountain, I made an effort to take a portrait of everybody that was involved — I did miss a few. I’m sorry. So, to those who helped, THANK YOU.

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Oct

04

Pemberton 2011: Day 4, Saxifrage’s North col

Personal
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Our fourth, and last, expedition took us to the North side of Saxifrage, much closer to the peak, but not quite at the peak. Seeing as this was our last day hike on the mountain, we really wanted to have a chance to take a look at the other side of Saxifrage, the side where we can see the White Lakes. That view gave us another idea of the mountain ranges behind there and gave us a new viewpoint of the uncovered areas in the mountain range. We took a long route (sorry no map), contouring the peak on the west side, through the forest, and then going up a huge bowl behind the peak. In the picture below, you can see the bowl where we walked up, towards the col on the left. The right side is the ridge we walked on our way out towards lake Valentine and camp.

On our way to the bowl, we had the chance to see a few very cool mountain ranges on the horizon, through the trees. Walking through the woods is not always fun, but the views that you get every now and then are magnificent (see below). I loved walking around there , except for the abundance of mosquitoes!

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Sep

27

Pemberton 2011: Day 3, Saxifrage and Cassioppe’s col

Personal
Day 3 Tracks

After spending a day and a half off the mountain, we all returned for another few days of camping and hiking around Lake Valentine. Luckily for us, we managed to skip two days of harsh rainy conditions. Yep, basically everything we had left up at camp was soaked! Coming by helicopter early in the morning was super cool though because we had to fly very low, under the clouds – a beautiful scene to observe from the helicopter (see below).

Before I continue with the story and pictures of our third expedition, I recommend you read a few of the related articles I’ve posted over the past few weeks, if you haven’t already:


View of the clouds in the lake Valentine area from helicopter.

So, our third expedition took us to an even better place than the first two. As the map above and the image below show, we walked all the way up to the col between the two peaks. It’s easy to see the area from the Lake Valentine pictures, which show the two peaks. It doesn’t look very far in the photos, but as we learned during this trip, mountain walks are always longer than they look. It took us about 3.5 hours to get to the col, but it gave us the opportunity to see the huge cliffs that are hiding behind Cassioppe Peak. We also saw the whole valley behind the col, which is one of the possible exits off this mountain ( though a somewhat hard one due to some swampy areas). We also saw (partially) the glaciers behind Saxifrage, which is another potential route people take on this mountain (en route to Cirque Pique).

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