Matt Glen should be congratulated on setting up another another superb climbing day in Cornwall Park, Auckland. The Open Masters Challenge provides an excellent opportunity for climbers to try out new techniques and equipment - with just a little bit of pressure to perform… but not too much. And there's plenty of time to talk through ideas and systems and to gain valuable input from other climbers.
Six climbers trialled Teufelberger Globe 5000 in the footlock event and most shaved about 2 seconds off their 'usual' time. It appears advisable to add a few more wraps on your friction hitch since the rope is only 10 mm in diameter. If you use an 8 mm footlock strop there is not much difference between the two lines. Treetools will have Globe 5000 available for the Official World Footlock Record Attempt at the Asia-Pacific Regional Tree Climbing TCC on Sunday March 21.
Matt had the Masters event set up with four stations positioned across three trees which required big swings and in mostcases multiple anchor points to complete. Every climber entered the tree using a different method; from Unicender, traditional SRT with hand ascender,Croll and Pantin, footlock, Tony Bennett had a "Tree Frog" derivative and Matt Glen's mechanical foot lock device. Apart from a couple of parrell ballfailures most climbers had sufficient time to remove gear from the tree on completion of the climb.Jawand Nga Chun, a NZ mens representative in the Asia-Pacific Regional TCC was in the audience (and acted as a judge in the Masters) but he was unableto climb due to a rolled ankle, the end result of a practice climb from earlier in the week. With the South Island Regionals only one week away and theAuckland Regionals and Asia-Pacifics in a fortnight this must be a concern for Jawand. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.
Photos of the day will be uploaded to Flickr overnight and Treetools will try to post some video segments showing footlock on Globe 5000 over the nextfew days.
Thanks to Cornwall Park for allowing the climbers to use the trees in this magnificent location.
Tumai in full flight between trees at the Open Masters Challenge.
