Let the Routesetting....(wait for it)....Begin!

Another competition season is upon us and the routesetting at Rocktown will begin soon. The competition date is set for March 31st. That means every route in the gym is going to be stripped, all the holds cleaned, and every route re-set in a matter of weeks. Weeks, you say? Yes. The routes themselves range in height from 40 feet at the low end to 120 feet plus on the high side. Whereas most gyms can set their routes in a matter of days, we need quite a bit more time due to the amount of labor required. I've grown accustom to jugging hundreds of feet over the course of setting in the shortened time period. If anything, it's a good way to get in shape. I think of it as big wall route-setting. The routesetting session will kick off last day of February and continue through March until the day of the comp. This year I should have a crew of about 10 other setters to help out. That's great because one year I set about 20 of the 30+ routes and it nearly killed me. Division of labor is a must in circumstances like these. Of course, quality control is extremely important and with so many setters it's always a challenge to keep everyone on task in terms of what they are assigned to set, how difficult the route should be and how decent the end result is. Overall, I'm generally pretty happy with the variety of routes we end up with at the end of the setting. As things progress I will be posting more insight into how it's going and maybe even give a step-by-step look at setting at Rocktown.

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