Home sweet home… Finally a local comp in our home base Oulu climbing center — the gym where we grew up as setters. This comp had been a long time coming! It was experience full of big emotions, setbacks, learning and most importantly fun!

It all started in the Summer of 2024. Well actually a lot earlier but that's when we met our to be guest setter– Niklas “Niki” Wiechmann – in June at a route setting event in Stockholm. As one of the most influential setters in the past decades he probably doesn't need an introduction. To summarise he has basically seen it all.

When we first met— It didn’t take long for us to notice that this guy was hella cool + most importantly professional. We didn't even ask when he said that it would be cool to visit Finland at some point. His humour matched our vibe and straight away when we had our comp in the calendar we started thinking — he could be the perfect international guest for Oulu.

Quality comp + quality guest + quality time.. What could go wrong?

Well, the formula seemed simple on paper:

Set some bangers.
Put on a show.
Have a good time.

But in reality, it was so much more. It had been four long years since our hometown last saw a proper finals-format competition, and we wanted to come back with a bang.

Not only was this the biggest comp our gym had ever hosted, but bringing in Niki as our first international guest setter in seven years made it even more special. We knew we were setting the bar high. And as a cherry on top – the level was gonna be nuts. We’re talking half of the male’s national team participating.

Comp and the setting

What why and how did we do?

Wednesday

The whole deal started on wednesday, as us three (Toni, Jaakko and Eelis) started to strip down the commercial boulders from our bouldering hall. We had some volunteer hands helping us with the stripping, washing and logistics which was really helpful as that amount of holds weigh a ton -pun intended.

After some logistics and planning, we decided to put up the M4 boulder, a power test piece on the middle overhang to lighten up the load for the next two days. This went well, me and Jaakko were putting holds on to the wall, and Eelis was testing the moves. The boulder came together pretty quick and it even looked a bit like its supposed to be there - the last boulder of the finals. Later that day, Jaakko went to pick up Niki from the airport. We met at the climbing gym, said hello and took a quick tour of the place and got straight to work, Sauna, reindeer stew and Chitchat. Well — we also took a look at our plan for the days to come.

Thursday

We started the next day as usual, coffee and breakfast. The plan is to set the final round for women and men. We quickly got to work, gave the chimney boulder to Niki, Eelis took W3 (power), Toni started on M1 (0-100) and Jaakko W4 (weird). In the end we finished our own and Niki made four final boulders, pretty quickly as well. We all took our turns testing the all boulders, tweaking them and gave them a pass. Working with Niki such an experienced setter — It was also really educating. It seemed like he had all the right solutions, tweaks and ideas on his mind.

Friday

Friday was the same, coffee and breakfast. The day started by stripping off the finals, marking the holds and taking photos of the boulders. We then proceeded to the qualification round. The plan was to make 30 boulders for all of the competitors. The day started fast, boulders were appearing left and right.

Then came lunch, and the speed slowed a bit. At 6pm we were way behind the schedule, we still hadn’t tested about ten boulders and we were missing about five. Frustration started to rise and we took a coffee break. Niki then took the controls and laid out the plan into four different pieces of paper. We then went through the boulders, decided what to do and who does it. In no time, the boulders were ready and tested - about two hours later, the clock was 8pm and we were heading home.

Saturday

Saturday morning started by taping the boulders, putting the number tags onto them and it was over, almost. We watched closely on how to competitors climbed, and analyzed if the final boulders were enough, or maybe even too much? All seemed okay and people had fun, the point was not only a great finals for the strongest ones, but a good time for everyone who came regardless of the skill level.

Qualification is over - and I had some thoughts on my head

Is the M1 too easy?
Is the M3 too easy?
Is the W3 too hard?

These are the questions I was thinking in my head, I of course brought them to others, we discussed. We did some final tweaks, made the ending of M1 a bit harder and took one crimp out of the W3 starting dyno and flipped the other one to a thumb press. Niki told us his own opinions on these tweaks - some were justified, but the W3 dyno as he said “ I would not do it”, maybe this was the experience talking, but we did it anyways. We just had to wait and see if it paid off.

Finals

Judging the level of the competitors is always hard. But by following the qualification round and knowing at least something that they are capable of doing, helps the process. This is how it went.

The finals started and the first boulders did wonders, they worked perfectly making some differences among the competitors and got almost the planned amount of zones and tops.

The second boulders worked fine as well, if something the W2 slab starting position, was maybe a bit too difficult, as two of the competitors, did not manage to establish on it. Could also be that they just didn't power up to the press enough and at least one of the competitors missed a small foot jib completely. Well either way things were still going great!

Boulder number three came up, mens went better than imagined, it almost worked 100% as we intended, but the W3 and it’s tweak - it was perhaps a disaster. Only one competitor managed to do the dyno at the start and got the zone. The start did not encourage the competitors to lift up their legs anymore, so many started to dyno from the starting hold, which was not planned - lesson learned.

Then came the last boulders, as we thought only one competitor did the M4 and the mens round was a success. On the W4 boulder, all went basically well, but it got no tops even though two competitors were really close, but failed due to wrong beta in the ending. Overall the finals went well, the atmosphere was over the roof with the competitors themselves and the crowd was ecstatic!

In the past, we’ve set plenty of relaxed comps. Looking back, we realized we had underestimated the level too often and set too many soft boulders. This time, we didn’t want to make the same mistake. After a quick discussion on day one, we made a call: fewer tops than before. We wanted to teach Climbing not topping.

That thought haunted us throughout the setting process—Is this too soft?? It all came to a boiling point thirty minutes before the final. We were making last-minute tweaks to the third women’s boulder when we suddenly questioned the start dyno. A vertical jump in the women’s final? Risky. Making it even harder? Stupid risky.

The red flags were there. A vertical jump. Fatigued athletes after three hours of climbing. But the devil carrying the sandbag was screaming on our shoulders — Fools! The move is too EASY. Sticking to our principle, we made a fatal tweak—turning the down-pull crimp into a thumbdercling.

As you know, the tweak didn’t pay off. Only one climber stuck the start dyno and reached the Zone. In hindsight, it’s easy to say it would have been fine without the change. Or would it? Maybe it was too hard either way. Maybe the moves after the Zone would have shut them down regardless. The truth is, in the moment, we just couldn’t know.

Decisions and setbacks like this are part of route setting. Looking back, we have to ask—what difference would it have made if the move was too easy? Spectators don’t know the difficulty of each move. Even if everyone had stuck the original jump, the action would have been more exciting, and we would have had a better show. So why were we so set on making it harder? In the end, it came from a place of respect for the climbers—we didn’t want to underestimate them. But what’s more valuable: the show or the experience for the climbers?

That’s something every setter has to decide for themselves. In our case, it didn’t matter. Our tweak made both the climbing experience and the show worse. It can feel devastating, but there’s no point in dwelling on it. Just analyze what happened, learn from it, and next time, you’ll be more prepared to make the right call.

Goodbye and farewell! The next adventure awaits!

—Team asetus

Oulu Open 2025