Climber spotlight: Lisa Kean

ClimbScotland Competition Coordinator Avril Gail spotted Lisa whilst in Munich at the IFSC Bouldering World Cup and we just had to find out more about Lisa's climbing and what she's been up to.


Hello Lisa! We'd love to hear about how you discovered climbing…

I first went climbing with a school friend at a taster session at Alien Rock and I liked it so much that I joined their Saturday kids club which is where I first met Mike Mullins, who is now my coach. I decided to have a go at the Scottish Youth Climbing Championship just for fun and I ended coming second overall and Scottish Champion (the person who came first was English). After that I was hooked and have been competing regularly ever since. I'm not from a climbing family so I've been very lucky to have had great coaching from Mike (and previously from Robbie Phillips before he became a globe-trotting sponsored climber) and to be part of the Youth Squad at Ratho. Mike has really helped me appreciate the sport as well as develop technically.

LisaKean BMCYO 2016

How Long have you been climbing for?

I started when I was eight and I'm now thirteen, so five years.

What is your favourite type of climbing?

I like all kinds of climbing but at the moment my favourite is bouldering. I really like bouldering competitions because they are so sociable and you get to climb so many different problems.

I usually climb indoors and it's great to live in Edinburgh and be close to EICA Ratho which is probably the best climbing wall in the world.

Do you have any advice for people looking to try a climbing competition?

For the younger age categories just put your name in for the Youth Climbing Series and give it a go. It's very friendly, there are always some problems you'll be able to do and you will definitely have fun.

If you are older, have a go at a bouldering competition at your local wall to start with. The competition at YCS and the national competitions like SYCC and SYBC in the older categories is a bit more serious so maybe find out the grades of the routes or boulders in your category, talk to an instructor or coach at your local wall and put in some training first.

German Alpine Clubs wall

Can you tell us a bit about your recent travels? We heard you were in Munich?

My mum is German so we like going to Germany and Austria on holiday so I can practice my German and we can do some shopping. This year we went to Innsbruck and Munich, which are big climbing towns. They even sell climbing harnesses in the supermarket in Innsbruck!

Some of my friends from the climbing competitions were also in Austria and we met up for a climb at the Tivoli wall at Innsbruck. Innsbruck is the home town for many of the Austrian climbing team and Jacob Schubert was bouldering next to us.

We also went to Imst to have a go on the huge outdoor arch there, which is used for international competitions. I’ve been there before for the Youth Colours Competition and it really is awesome but we got there in the afternoon and it was about 30 Centigrade and far too hot for serious climbing.

The shopping in Munich was just as interesting for a climber as in Innsbruck. They didn’t sell climbing harnesses in the supermarkets but we found a sports shop with a full scale via ferrata and another one with a pool for testing kayaks! In Munich we climbed at Boulderzentrum Ost which is a large and really busy bouldering wall with a great atmosphere. The IFSC Bouldering World Cup was being held in the Olympic Stadium the next day so the wall had set some warm-up problems on their comp wall and it was fun to have a try.

The German team climber Sebastien Halenke was having a go too when we were there and was really easy to spot because of his bright red Mohawk haircut.
Lisa Shauna and Leah
We also climbed at the German Alpine Club's wall in North Munich which is an awesome building with huge lead walls on the outside and lots of bouldering and routes inside as well.

When we were in Munich at the IFSC Bouldering World Cup was at the Olympic Stadium so naturally we went and it was brilliant. All the athletes were very friendly and approachable on the qualification day where there wasn't such a big crowd and I managed to get a picture with Shauna Coxsey and Leah Crane.

This site uses cookies to store information on your computer. See our Cookie Policy for further details on how to block cookies.
I am happy with this
 

Cookies

What is a Cookie

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is a piece of data stored by a website within a browser, and then subsequently sent back to the same website by the browser. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember things that a browser had done there in the past, which can include having clicked particular buttons, logging in, or having read pages on that site months or years ago.

NOTE : It does not know who you are or look at any of your personal files on your computer.

Why we use them

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, your computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:

  • recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested
  • measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast
  • analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with our website so we can make them better

You can manage these small files and learn more about them from the article, Internet Browser cookies- what they are and how to manage them

Learn how to remove cookies set on your device

There are two types of cookie you may encounter when using our site :

First party cookies

These are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about usage of our site.

We use cookies in several places – we’ve listed each of them below with more details about why we use them and how long they will last.

Third party cookies

These are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which we are using to enhance our site, for example Facebook or Twitter have their own cookies, which are controlled by them.

We do not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the third party websites for more information about these.

Log files

Log files allow us to record visitors’ use of the site. The CMS puts together log file information from all our visitors, which we use to make improvements to the layout of the site and to the information in it, based on the way that visitors move around it. Log files do not contain any personal information about you. If you receive the HTML-formatted version of a newsletter, your opening of the newsletter email is notified to us and saved. Your clicks on links in the newsletter are also saved. These and the open statistics are used in aggregate form to give us an indication of the popularity of the content and to help us make decisions about future content and formatting.