When you think of the Netherlands you may think of windmills, cheese, perhaps clog wearing blonds? One could be forgiven for not thinking of 500 people descending on the North Sea coast for a day of bouldering.

But in Scheveningen near the town of The Hague that’s exactly what’s going to happen Aug 25-26.

Holding the second annual Boulderen aan Zee! (BAZ!) comp down on the sandy beach has obvious advantages.

· The public gets to see how cool bouldering is & participate
· Beautiful setting, er I mean scene
· Lots of space for spectators & climbers
· It’s the beach!

The only down side of course is getting sand in your britches. But that’s easily ignored when you have 200 new problems from FB3 (VB) up to FB8 (V11) to do in five hours.

The Setters

A strong crew from Bleaustone holds and Frank Bogerman from Axis holds will also be coming over to set the big gun routes and finals.

The Walls

The walls were built by the organizers of the event using simple scaffolding and plywood. Abel Schooleman, event CEO says for this years edition, “We’re putting down 6 blocks measuring 2.5m by 2.5m and two of them will be connected to create an arena for the finals.”

Scoring

One of the most interesting parts of the comp is the scoring. Each problem is worth 1000 points. But that doesn’t mean you’ll get 1000 points for sending it. The 1000 points is divided by the number of people who also sent it during the comp.

Because of all the strong men and women that will be showing up, however, the organizers will have to make a few adjustments to level the playing field. Schooleman says, “We’re adjusting the system a bit because we’ve got too many problems for anyone to do in 5 hours so we’re giving the harder problems a harder rating.”

Imagine This

A beach bouldering tour, from Miami to Chicago to Los Angeles. If you can’t bring the masses to the boulders, bring the boulders to the masses! Imagine what all those bikini clad and muscle bound beach goers could do for the sport (and our careers).

Here’s a short video of the 2006 edition of BAZ!, and a long one.

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