BU Climbing Club: Rookies, Vets Test Their Physical and Mental Agility
BU Climbing Club: Rookies, Vets Test Their Physical and Mental Agility
BU Climbing Club: Rookies, Vets Test Their Physical and Mental Agility
On a recent Friday night, a climber tightly grasps two oblong holds on a slanted wall, concentrating on his next move. Nearby, a group of girls cheer on a friend who’s made it halfway up her first-ever route. Another pair of students gesture as they try to figure out the beta, or approach, to a difficult problem. Tiny clouds of chalk dust fill the air.
The occasion is BU Climbing Club’s spring climbing night, where rookie and veteran climbers are trying out their hands—and feet—at bouldering at Central Rock Gym (CRG) in Cambridge. One of the most common forms of indoor climbing, bouldering involves ascending routes about 10 to 15 feet off the ground, with the climber protected only by the padding below. Each route, or problem, is made up of a series of holds, or textured grips attached to the wall. Holds come in an array of sizes and shapes, and they largely determine the difficulty of a route.
Founded in 2019, the club currently has just under a dozen members, both novices and experienced competitive climbers. Relaunching the club after several virtual semesters has been a challenge, explains president and cocaptain Hannah Schmidt (COM’23, Sargent’23), who says her primary goal this year has been reestablishing a climbing community at BU.
“I hope we can have more nights like these in the future,” Schmidt tells the nearly 30 BU students who had made the trek to Cambridge for an evening of bouldering.
With climbing combining balance, strength, and problem-solving, its popularity has soared over the past decade, and the sport made its Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. In addition to bouldering, the combined Olympic event included sport climbing—where competitors ascend walls from 40 to 50 feet high, clipping their rope into fixed protection as they go—and speed climbing, where climbers rapidly traverse a standardardized route.
“I think climbing is one of the most interesting sports,” says club cocaptain Jake Purinton (CAS’25), “because not only is it incredibly physically demanding, it’s also a puzzle—there’s such a mental challenge. In sport climbing too, there’s a [mental component] of committing to moves,” as you’re more exposed and at risk of falling.
Ariel Chen (Questrom’23), one of the BU group who’s not a club member, says that given her fear of heights, she much prefers bouldering to climbing on ropes. Sporting a plush, shark-shaped chalk bag, Chen says her brother had climbed during his time at BU and got her interested in the sport. Today, she says, she enjoys bouldering for the exercise: “it works every muscle in your body.”
Club member Pavel “Pasha” Gromov (ENG’22) says he started climbing when the group was first formed during his freshman year. One day “a friend who was in my freshmen chem class was watching a climbing video on his laptop, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool!’ So he invited me to the FitRec wall and I just stuck with it.” These days, Gromov enjoys bouldering and trad climbing—where climbers place, and later remove, protective gear as they go—in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. “I like the adventure part of it,” he says.
In addition to reconnecting the BU climbing community, Schmidt and Purinton are working to interest fellow team members in competing in the USA Climbing collegiate series. In February, five team members attended their first competition since COVID began. “It was great,” Schmidt says. “It was just a good time to be together and talk about comp strategy.” To provide newcomers to competition climbing more experience, the team also organized a mock competition at FitRec at the end of February. “I think [even] without a team,” she says, “we would be competing individually.”
And that’s what they did at the end of March, when Schmidt, Purinton, and Ethan Westerburg (CAS’25) competed individually in the USA Climbing (USAC) Northeast Divisional Championships, held at MetroRock Climbing Center in Everett, Mass. Westerburg took 19th in men’s bouldering and 11th in lead climbing, which earned him a spot at the Collegiate National Championships this April in Bridgeport, Pa. Schmidt narrowly missed joining him after placing 21st in boulder and 18th in lead among the more than 70 climbers from local colleges who had turned out for the divisional championships.
Schmidt got hooked on competitive climbing as a high schooler back home in Westport, Conn. While she’s always preferred bouldering and sport climbing, at one point, she “lost a bet” on her youth climbing team and had to register for the oft-maligned discipline of speed climbing. Despite her initial reluctance, she made it all the way to the USAC nationals in the discipline.
Today, she’s deeply involved in the Greater Boston climbing community, having worked as a routesetter at CRG Boston and FitRec, and currently as a youth teams coach at CRG Watertown. “I have been climbing for so long now, it’s just a part of my life,” she says. “Even if I don’t work in the industry or compete [after graduating], I would still do it for fun.”
Club leaders say that while they have yet to see the widespread interest in competitive climbing they’d like, they’re encouraged by the strong turnout at their spring climbing night. “Our goal is to grow [the club],” Purinton says. “At the end of my four years at BU, I want climbing to be a club sport.”
The BU Climbing Club is open to climbers of all skill levels. To learn more, reach out to club president Hannah Schmidt at hannahs8@bu.edu.
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