Amelia Honabach

pan american cup slc ⛰️
p20 boulder | p23 lead

first elite series comp in over 2 years and pretty stoked i came back for this one. after going to college, i discovered, as many aged out comp kids do, that finding the capacity for training is difficult and real life sorta takes over. climbing became something to maintain over maybe 2-3 unstructured sessions a week and comps became an outlet for fun and seeing old friends. i always wanted to be able to jump back in but didn’t really know when i’d have the time or bandwidth. i left the elite series behind for a while since i want to respect these comps and give them more than what I currently was able to give to climbing.

i decided to last minute sign up for this comp since i figured it would be nice to see friends one last time before going abroad for all next comp season and it would be cool to compete at a pan am event even if i might be completely outclassed. for the next month leading to salt lake, i decided to train the best i could to see what would be possible. i finally felt like i had the adequate physical preparation i havent had since high school as well as a stronger, matured mindset that i didnt have back in youth. i honestly had no idea how id stack up in elite after so much time off but i was excited and grateful to make semis for both boulder and lead (despite the 4 rounds and 4 days in a row climbing thru 100 degree heat) learned so much about micro details in my climbing and also about the difficulty of the rounds past qualis. forever in love with the game, everyone and everything comp climbing, and all the lessons i learn here❣️