torsdag 24. januar 2013

DM 2012 - Behind the Scenes!

From Kalymnos, I went directly to Bodø (in northern Norway) to set problems for the Norwegian national bouldering cup.
At the time of packing, I did for some reason not think any further then Kalymnos, and thus left my down jacket in Sogndal. 
Now, finding myself going from 30+ degrees to less then 3 with nothing but a sweater, this lack of foresight was coming back to haunt me..

 "The old slaughter house, now turned bouldering gym in Bodø, whit a great mountain/fjord view" 

I could write on and on about constantly missing the bus, freezing my ass off and so on, but I won´t.
Bodø was a "fun" experience, if fun can be used to describe constantly working...
Not only did I do the route setting (with Hannah), but for the first time I also worked as a commentator on the live streaming, something that lead me to getting the job commentating on the national championships later on, but I digress.. 

"Jan Erik testing one of the junior finals, here seen from the commentator box" 

Completely wasted I also had a film show in the evening after the comp, here I undoubtedly made little sense, but luckily for me it requires little effort to press play when you can´t think of anything to say. 

But enough with the intro...

During one of our days working in Bodø, a call came in from a man in need in Denmark. 
With barely a week to go, the French routesetting team booked for the Danish bouldering championships had canceled, leaving the man, Nico, to find a new team on very short notice.

Since I had no other plans, I accepted and that is how I one week later found myself in the climbing gym in Århus. 
To join me, Nico had gotten the "danish" swede Kalle and the actual dane Casper. 

"The two skinny looking barbarians, Kalle and Casper"

Kalle had set for several big comps in Scandinavia and Denmark before, but having favoured school (and golf!) the last 6 six months, was a bit off his game.

Casper, setting boulders on a daily basis at Copenhagen boulders, was perhaps lacking experience setting for big comps, but straight out of Font, definitely had his game face on.

I had never before worked as a routesetter outside Norway, yet the responsibility of being head route-setter (with no extra pay..) was still for some reason trusted upon me. 
This probably because I was unknown in Denmark and the easiest to blame in the event of complete failure, but I prefer to think it was... hmm... I´v got nothing...

Setting for a comp usually means a ridiculous amount of hours in a short amount of time. Since the pay usually isn´t very good, the chemistry of the route-setting team decides if it´s something worth doing or not.
Not knowing who Nico would hook me up with, taking this job was therefor a bit of a gamble. 
Luckily for me, Casper and Kalle turned out to be two of the coolest dude´s ever, our chemistry great and hanging out with them a blast from beginning to end.

"The barbarians of Scandinavia united at last" 

I could write on about all sorts of weird shit that happened during this week, but I´ll leave it with a couple of pictures and of course the much anticipated film I haven´t actually told people I was making.

"Kalle checks out the alien lamp at the city hippie sleep-in"  

"Casper, in lack of any other choice, goes for the organic breakfast after his 2,5 hours sleep" 

 
"Casper checks out the potentially good looking lifeguard in the next door swimming pool" 

"Kalle makes the macro leap"

"Our great assistant Anders, here testing one of the mens finals"

 "Our second assistant Jeppe, finally finding us a bus after leading us the wrong way for ages.."  

 "Casper introduces Kalle´s face to his nice sweaty palm"

"Denmark's best workplace, McDonald´s?" 

"Starving from yet another day on beer and cashew nuts, Kalle is devastated to find the McDonald´s closed for the night.."    

"The complexity of 100+ boulder stations getting the best of Kalle"

"Kalle putting on strong pose, here in front of the "Macromania" boulder"

"Casper, possibly trying out for the Derelict champaign, working his "le Tigre" on the easy Svæ" 

"Magnum

 "Sweden and Denmark joining forces for one last great pose-down"  

And finally, the film with a capital THE!

DM 2012 seen from a routesetters perspective.



Now THE film might paint a picture of us failing with the juniors, but as there where 6 different classes I will not say our failure was complete, more like 33%...
The seniors went much better, that is if I choose to ignore that the women´s finals didn´t see too many tops, which I of course do:D
Since I was half asleep in the senior semi´s, I only filmed a couple of my own boulders, there where however many more really cool problems set by Casper and Kalle that never made it into this film. 

On a more "serious" note. I would like to say thanks to Nico for doing the work even further behind the scenes and just getting us all together.
I would also like to thank our great helper Anders who showed up almost every day to do the "dirty" work without getting payed!
And last but not least the Danish climbing community for showing up and making all our work worth while. 

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