Bouldering Problems - My first post about climbing - My first 6b+ completed.

I have been Bouldering for a little over two years now, and I can't even express how much I enjoy this sport. This is my first post about Bouldering, and definitely not my last.

For those unfamiliar with Bouldering, it is a discipline of climbing, but unlike sport climbing, you use no ropes or harnesses and the wall is usually a maximum of 4 metres high (roughly 13 feet) and the floor beneath the wall is soft padding for when you inevitably fall.

I will certainly film it on landscape, and a better camera than my dying iphone in future so I apologize for the size and quality.

You typically start with both hands on a hold (or possibly two depending how the route is set) and you climb the specific colour grade by completing a set of moves (called a beta) and finish on a final hold (called a top, or finish hold). The finish is demonstrated usually by holding on with both hands for 3 seconds, demonstrating control.

I have mostly played team sports my entire life like Rugby Union, or Soccer in my younger years, but this is one I can do on my own without the boring repetitiveness I find in a gym.

So I will introduce more info about Bouldering over the next few weeks, but for now, here is my first 6b+. This is on the competition wall on of Boulderwelt Munich Ost, which was the largest Bouldering gym in the world only a few years ago. Now the sport has exploded in popularity (for good reason) and I believe the biggest is now in Austin, Texas... who'd have suspected that.

So the scale of routes or problems as we call them alternatively, varies from country to country, but we use one of the European scales. To put it into perspective, 6b+ looks impossible to a novice, and way to easy for an expert. So I am in the middle somewhere. I have been trying to bridge the gap between 6b+ and 6c for a few months, but I have realised that this is the point where you can't simply replace technique with strength... but I am working towards it daily. It helps working in the gym, assisting the route setters, but still progress is by no means instant.

DanedeBeau