I participated in my first climbing competition yesterday at SF Mission Cliffs. There were three "Masters" divisions (Masters means 20 or over... this is a young man's sport). class A: lead climb 5.12 class B: lead climb 5.11 class C: top rope 5.10 or below Since I can't really lead climb 5.11 I entered class C. I showed up at 8:30 AM and was put in "isolation" with the other competitors. There are two qualifying routes. At 9 AM we got to look at the routes for 10 minutes. They looked pretty standard. Then we returned to isolation and went out one at a time to climb. The qualifying routes were super easy. All 10 class C men flashed them both. There was a long gap until the "finals" at 4 PM. I killed some time programming C++ in a local Starbucks, and then watched the Open men's competition (as always, mind-boggling climbing by superhuman climbers). This ended in a 3-way tie, requiring a "super-final" later on. The finals route was a legitimate 5.10C or D. It was exciting, because by now there was a sizeable crowd waiting around for the super-final. It had a couple of tricky bits, but I flashed it. But so did 7 out of the 10 guys in my group, so we had to have another elimination round. This was on a stout 5.11C. By this time I had done so much sitting around and getting psyched that my body had tremendous stored-up energy, and my hands had that suction-cup, vacuum-grip feel. At times like these I can sometimes climb 5.11C. Unfortunately, on the start one of my feet slipped off the starting foothold and tapped the floor. That was it - climb over. What a letdown! I didn't stick around to see how the other guys did. I'm VERY pissed off at myself. My only consolation is that the trophies were majorly butt ugly. ------------------------- POSTSCRIPT (a few weeks later). I returned to Mission Cliffs, and that 5.11C is now rated 5.12C!! I tried the start, and it was immediately clear that I would NOT have gotten anywhere on it, slip or no slip. That made me feel a little better.