The BMC Leading Ladder Final was held today at Reading Climbing Centre. 52 finalists took part in a fantastic display of determined competition climbing.

Full results can be found here. 

The atmosphere at this yeats BMC Leading Ladder Final was very friendly and relaxed, as competition kicked off at 10am.

The finalists had 6 hours to climb 5 routes in their given category, with everyone helping each out and the beta was flowing freely!

The climbers would watch each other climb and take it in turns going first on any given route. There were some impressive performances right across the grades with most notable a young Alex Norton putting in some fantastic efforts on some huge reaches for his height on the 7a and 7b routes.

Cat A
There were some very closely fought battles in this category with the closest being in the under 16 female category with Grace Fidler coming out on top. Joe Czubkowski put in a valiant effort, but good not keep Tom Gant from running away with the win in the U16 males. In the adult categories Gill Wood and Michael Robinson put in solid performances to secure their wins.

Cat B
The start of category B was Emily Allen, who having just upgraded herself from Category A as she has improved so much over this season went on to win category B as well! Cai Bishop-Guest went on to best Robin Cloke by the smallest of margins as did Emily Fell. Chris Parsons turned in a fantastic performance by onsighting all his routes and pushing into the next category's routes to secure his win.

Cat C
Jennifer Wood put in a solid performance with four full gas afforts at the 7c putting her into 1st place just ahead of Sarah Pashley in the over 16 female category.

Nick Moulden experience triumphs over youth and exhuberance in the over 16 male caetgory, pushing young guns Asheligh Wolsey-Heard and Tom Bonnert into 2nd and 3rd respectively. Special mention in this category should go to Mike Bean who was one of 2 competitors to have managed to turn in 10 leading ladder scores and has been in a final of every category of the Leading Ladder, moving up each year as the ladder has helped him focus his training and push his grade.

Buster Martin crushed all the routes up to 8a and got within two holds of the top of the 8b on his 2nd go, to be clear winner in the under 16 category, with Tara Hayes climbing as strongly as some of the boys in the under 16 female category.

All in all the event was a great success with everyone enjoying the excellently set routes and the great friendly atmosphere. At the end of the day a short open forum was held to discuss ways of improving the leading ladder in the future and some great ideas were conceived that will be implemented into next years events.

A huge vote of thanks goes to Reading Climbing Centre for hosting the event, DMM for providing the fantastic prizes and Mammut for providing the ropes that were fully tested throughout the day.

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