Amidst a soggy evening snowstorm on Sunday, January 25, just outside Salt Lake City, the Momentum climbing gym bustled with energy — a crowd of hundreds gathered to witness America's top climbers vie for the 2009 SCS Adult National Championship (scsnationals.org). Outside of Momentum's thick walls, the echo of cheers and applause faded into the night, while inside, Carlo Traversi and Emily Harrington bested the competition to clinch first place finishes.

“It was a big confidence booster,” said Harrington. “I just tried to focus on climbing well and not really worrying about how I was going to do. I try to take it one move at a time.”

Harrington, 22, the 2008 SCS Nationals champ, managed to grab the last hold of this year’s wandering and pumpy women’s route before falling. Her closest competitors struggled just moves away from the top of the route, stymied by a long reach to a poor right hand pinch, followed by a big move off of a small crimp to the finishing jug. For second place finisher Paige Claassen, the competition came to a sudden close when she reached for the right hand pinch with her left hand, confusing the sequence and falling soon after.

“When I got to the top, I knew I probably wasn’t going to be able to match and finish it; I was kind of stuck,” Claassen said. “I decided to just go for the points, but making the decision was probably the hardest part. The wall is just so tall that you get increasingly tired, but I didn’t think the holds really got worse until the very top.”

Although Claassen and Harrington are often each other’s main competitors (last year at Nationals, Harrington beat Claassen in a semi-final showdown by a single hold), their friendship remains unsullied by the pressures of competition.

“We’re really close friends and we train together all the time,” said Claassen, who can be spotted climbing with Harrington at the Boulder Rock Club in Colorado.

Claassen added that she feels she climbs better under pressure and the crowd only serves to motivate her. For men’s champion Carlo Traversi, the key is staying calm and confident.

“Comp climbing is just very hit or miss, but I was pretty relaxed. I’m confident in what I can handle nowadays, so I felt like I could definitely do the route going into it,” Traversi said. “I generally move pretty quickly on routes because it helps conserve energy. A lot of other people like to take it more mellow, but for me it helps if I kind of get in the flow of things and keep moving.”