Climbers of all ages and skill levels made their way to the Porter Creek For-Fun Climbing Competition on Monday. The Climb Yukon Association cleared the wall and reset it with 25 new problems for the climbers to enjoy.

The competition was for fun and the participants could climb for however long they wanted between 6-9 p.m. The challenges on the bouldering wall varied in difficulty so everyone who attended had features they could enjoy.

“This is our bi-yearly climbing competition,” said Climb Yukon President Max Parker.

“We took down all the rocks and put up a bunch and to celebrate that we decided to have a competition.

“We spent the weekend putting rocks up into routes we thought people would find challenging. We tried to set for a wide range of skill levels, as well as a wide range of reach and strength features. We tried to balance it out so everyone could find their spot to climb.”

It is a competition but everyone was competing against themselves and their personal bests. While down on the mats you could hear the climbers on the ground encouraging and helping the people on the wall.

“People are chatting about how they are going to tackle things, nobody really cares if they come in first,” said Parker.

Scoring was kept by the climbers, and they were awarded points based on the difficulty of the wall and the number of attempts it took them to accomplish the climb, it was then confirmed by a witness.

Junior climber Marshal Latham has been climbing for a year and a half and believes he has improved from his last climbing season. Monday he wanted to tackle challenges 1-10.

“I wanted to try and get problems 1 to 10, and the rest just try them,” said Latham. “The goal hasn’t been met yet. I did this event last year and I think I have improved. It’s pretty intense, your muscles get really pumped and it gets harder to do climbs after awhile.”

Oscar Karais, another junior climber, has been climbing for four weeks and it is his first climbing competition. He says he wants to improve so he can make the trip to Juneau in January, and tackle the bouldering gym with some confidence.

Climb Yukon has been around for 25 years and is continuing to grow. Parker is coming up on a year as president and says the club has grown a lot.

“We do public nights twice a week and it’s always packed,” said Parker. “It used to be for the youth, until three years ago. There is definitely a community here, a lot of the older community is used to climbing outdoors, but we get six months of snow.”

Parker says the long-term goal for the club is to get a climbing gym built in Whitehorse.

“We are looking for an actual facility,” said Parker. “We are trying to fight for a location right now. We have had a lot of meetings with the city and YG and we are trying to see if they would be interested in something. Since public nights are packed something bigger would definitely be used I think.”