the 2019 ParaClimb reached new heights
Edinburgh International Climbing Arena hosted the 2019 Scottish Paraclimbing Festival alongside our first ever
Scottish Lead Climbing Competition (SLCC) for adults on Sunday 8th September. Well done and thank you to the 21 competitors who came along and took part in this event, including the Scottish Paraclimbing Club members and volunteers; it was also fantastic to see competitors and parents from the Scottish Youth Climbing Championships (SYCC) coming along and volunteer.
This year, there was no British Paraclimb Series, so our event was a stand-alone festival. As a result, as well as the usual competitive element with paraclimbers with a lot of competition experience attending, we had a come-and-try-it category. It was good to see some of the GB Para Team attending, but this certainly made for difficult route-setting to cater for such large differences in ability.
Quite a few of the para climbers took part in the speed climbing event that was being held as part of the SLCC; Matthew Phillips notching up an impressive 24 sec time. Their results can be found in the SLCC Speed results below (see the upper results list):
Adult Speed
In the week before, the para setting team set a series of new boulder problems on the Arena Boulders and two new routes especially for the event. They then modified two of the routes set for the Scottish Youth Climbing Championships that was held on the Saturday as well. The result was a spread of routes across areas of the Ratho arena walls not used for the para event before. This included two routes on the Hanger Competition Wall, which proved steep and difficult for some of the competitors whilst other categories, particularly the leg amputees, found the challenge rewarding. So thanks go to the setters:
- Keith Lynch
- Jess McCaskey
The Scottish Paraclimbing Festival was supported by
SportScotland and our event sponsor
Tiso who provided prizes for all the podiums (including the para Speed). We would like to say a massive thank you to these sponsors who helped make this event happen and also to
Edinburgh International Climbing Arena who hosted it for us, and of course a huge thanks to all the competitors who made there way to Edinburgh for the competition.
Last but not least, thanks go to our Climbing Competitions Coordinators (Scott Forsyth and John Donaldson ably assistent by Scott Donaldson) who make these events run like clockwork.
Full information about the ClimbScotland ParaClimb Festival can be found on the main
ParaClimb page.