Last Saturday, climbers from all over the Pacific Northwest arrived at Whitman for the annual Sweet Onion Crank climbing competition. The Crank allows climbers of all skills to participate in the competition against fellow climbers of a similar skill rank at Whitman’s own climbing wall.
“The Sweet Onion Crank is the final climbing competition of the NC3 series, and it is the primary competition circuit for the region. So the Crank is a pretty big event for the climbing community. The competition consists of tiers of climbers: beginner, intermediate, advanced and open. Climbers compete against people in the same bracket, so experience doesn’t really matter,” said event organizer junior Matt Sellick.
All climbers are given a time period to rack up as many points as possible
“The climbers are allotted two and a half hours to rack up points by successfully climbing boulder problems without falling. The points are assigned based on the difficulty of the problem, and climbers record their points on a scorecard. After two heats of climbing, and a round of silly speed bouldering, the winners are announced and prizes are distributed,” said Sellick.
The environment of the entire competition was laid-back, as everyone enjoyed using the climbing wall.
“It was awesome to see climbers from all over the region enjoying our facility and the problems that Whitman’s climbing community worked hard on putting up,” said Sellick.
This huge event took a lot of preparation, but it ran smoothly with no difficulties.
“For me, the Crank was a culmination of eight months of preparation. It was a bit hectic and stressful running the event, but it is always fun to be part of a climbing community event. The community is very laid-back and talented, so the Crank did not feel overly competitive,” said Sellick.
For the event organizers, one of the best parts of the day was seeing how all of their hard work paid off, as they saw everyone having a great time.
“I think that my favorite part of the Crank was seeing how excited people were to climb the problems that my friends and I spent time setting. It is always satisfying to see folks enjoying something you created, but the Crank brings a ton of great climbers to the wall so it is interesting to see how people solve the movement of your puzzles,” said Sellick, who is part of a climbing staff that completely redid the gym’s bouldering problems.
For all of the climbers, the experience of the Crank was just as great as they were able to compete in a very friendly environment.
“The crank was really fun. It was packed; it took so long that they were registering people constantly for 45 minutes. It has a really nice atmosphere where everyone tries to help each other with the problems and the people were all really accepting of any skill level,” said sophomore Quinn Piibe.
When the event finally began, Whitman climbers were eager to begin after watching the event being set up for the past few weeks.
“I was excited to finally get to try all of the boulder problems I had been watching people set up for weeks in the gym,” said Piibe.
Each climber enjoyed climbing and pushing themselves to beat their previous records.
