marissa and i made a trip to pusan this weekend to attend pusan's 4th annual inetrnational trex games. the games which promote TRaditional, Electronic and Xtreme sports (hence 'TREX') was attended by a slew of other foreign climbers from the local climbing scene. at last weekend's korea on the rock's meet and greet, dong-il, a korean climber, did his best to recruit as many of us as possible to attend, regardless of our respective climbing ability. though i'm not a big fan of competition climbing, the draw of 100,000 won (about $100 canadian), two free nights at a condo on the beach and inclusive meals was a little too tempting to pass up.
after taking the 75 minute train to pusan on friday nite, we made our way to hanhwa resort to register and drop off our bags. i made my way to my assigned room amidst the buzz of international atheletes in the lobby. competitors from climbers, skateboarders, inline skaters, bmx'ers and various traditional (tae kwon do, kite flying) and electronic (star craft) players filed in from india, china, thailand, malaysia, canada, america, germany and any number of other far off lands.
i was pleasantly surprised to have my door opened by shaun, a guy i'd met briefly in chaing mai during my visit in june. he was just as surprised to see me here in korea. we quickly caught up and headed out on the town for some late night beers. a great way to prepare for a 6am rise to take part in a prestigious ($5000us winner's pot) climbing competition. :/
after a satisfying breakfast at 6:30, we made our way to the bexco building a short shuttle bus ride away. an hour of isolation while the routes were set up, and i was the second climber on the wall at roughly 8am. each competitor climbs 4 boulder problems of varying difficulty. four minutes to climb each problem in as many attempts as needed. four minutes between each problem to rest. bonus points were given for completing a problem on the first try and for making it to an assigned middle of the route hold. the problems were fairly stout. i climbed the first route onsight (first try). the second on my second try, though i had to climb it a third time as i touched an out of bounds area while reaching for the last hold. the third problem was the hardest and i failed to do more than tap the middle hold (for which no bonus points are awarded). by the fourth problem i was having trouble recovering from the pump i'd gained on the third. it took me three attempts to send. with that, i managed to place in the middle of the competition. out of 48 climbers, i ranked 25. not great, but not horrible either considering the caliber of climbers that the competition attracted. within the korean foreign climbing community i placed 2nd. there was also a speed climbing competition which was quite fun. i again managed a mediocre 26th place.
as only the top 20 climbers advanced to the preliminaries in the bouldering comp, i was somewhat relieved that i wouldn't need to commit my sunday morning as well to an early rise. especially since there were plans for the kotr contingent to head out to a pub crawl in one of the more popular university districts.
by midnight we'd settled in to a night of wandering from one waygook infested bar to another. at 15,000 won for a six bar ticket with a drink at each bar, it was a cheap night. a cheap, late and very fun nite littered with loud live music and good laughs with good friends.
sunday morning was not as fun. shaun, les and i were forced out of our room at noon to our collective dismay. we stumbled to bexco to take in the finals of the men's and women's bouldering comp which turned out to be very impressive. of the top 6 male competitors, 5 were young koreans and 1 was japanese. though the japanese climber was clearly the strongest of the lot, he blew an onsight attempt by missing a key hold and was left with 2nd place while one of the korean kids took first.
after catching the train back to gyeongsan last nite, i crashed out at 10:30 and slept like the proverbial log. this morning has matched my mood: rainy and lethargic. plans for a trip to sokcho this weekend to see old friends and do some climbing has me excited.
