Most people who have my Facebook account have seen this video. I've toiled a bit over why I compete thereafter and have been a bit on the sour grapes thought process. After seeing Justin Spain going through very similar problems in the UIAA competitions last year, I thought that the judging might have gotten better, I guess not. It's hard to not get down over something like this and I did submit a protest and appeal, but was told by Pavel Shabalina that I would just lose money in the process, so I just went to the bar and tried to get over it. When I walked into the bar, the route setters were there and immediately told me that they were sorry for not having a red line and that the judge shouldn't have pulled me off.

People asked me if I was coming back to compete in Saas-Fee or another UIAA World Comp last night. I said, "you want my answer tonight ? " I think that the people I was competing against should be the most upset since they didn't get a chance to better me or not. What a waste.

Gordon and Malcolm have been great energy and have picked me up out of the mud. Its great to have good friends to be there when things go bad. I'd love to say that I learned something from this competition. Maybe I did learn something. Perhaps I learned that I don't have control over all the elements in the competition environment as I thought, and that I should be ok with the fact that I didn't fail to train, didn't mentally prepare, or wasn't ready in some way.

I have only one more competition (not a UIAA comp). I'm not sure how I'll feel about it all in a week or a month or next season. Time to go to the mountains after Rabenstien. Competitions are good to make me a better climber, but I need some head space after them.