Team Touchstone, our competitive youth climbing team, is made up of a veritable cornucopia of crushers of all ages. Meet the kids who are representing us at competitions around the country – nay – world! This week we sat down with home town hero Annie O’Brien. Anne has been a familiar face around Berkeley Ironworks for years. But don’t let her bashful smile and ingenious Halloween costumes fool you. This girl’s a stone cold crusher.Name: Annie O’Brien
Age: 16
Years climbing: 7
Years competing: 4
What are your proudest competition achievements?
I’ve qualified for four different National’s, and I won Regional’s this year for bouldering. I also have a pretty impressive climbing competition t-shirt collection, if I do say so myself.
What is your favorite style of climbing?
My favorite style of climbing is probably really powerful boulder problems set in really steep areas, because I like how there are usually multiple ways of doing these types of problems, so it’s pretty fun getting to see everybody’s different styles.
What is your most memorable climbing experience?I ended up finishing in second during the TCS2014 Bouldering Finals at Dogpatch last year. I guess this is memorable because, even though I managed to surprise a large portion of the people there, I’m pretty sure that by far the most surprised person was myself.
What is the best think about climbing?
I really love the community involved in rock climbing and competition climbing. Also, I’m a sucker for super nerdy puzzles, so I do kind of have a soft spot for figuring out beta on problems.
What is something we don’t know about you?
I don’t admit to being good at a lot of things, but I’m an undiscovered prodigy at remembering birthdays.
