Andrew Funk Sends V13, His First of the Grade
With Squaminard Low, his hardest boulder to date
Andrew Funk has been a top western Canadian climber since he was on the junior Canmore climbing team under coach Dung Nguyen. Funk has been having a strong 2021 with a number of hard repeats in Squamish.
His most recent big tick was Squaminard Low V13 in the Grand Wall Boulders. On Sendage, he noted, “”Let it bang when you slam that hard”. Just a dream to finally put it all together. By far the hardest boulder I’ve done.” He put in 25 sessions over 2.5 months.
Other hard sends for Funk this year include The Method V12, Fool’s Gold V12, Nalle’s Arete V10, Overdrive V11, Other Way V10, Underworld V10, One Zen V10, On Again Off Again V10, YSF V10, and Zunga V11.
We spoke to Funk over six years ago just after he made his first onsight of a 5.13a in Andrew Funk is a Rising Canadian Rock Star. He told us, “I started competing six years ago, which is kind of crazy to think about now. My comp career has been a bit of a roller coaster. I was really quite successful through my first few years, placing as well as second in the 2011 Youth Lead Nationals and travelling to the World Youth Climbing Championships that year. The next three years, I had perfect early seasons, winning lots of youth local events, but I could never quite perform well when it really counted at Nationals. Fortunately, this year, I’ve really hit my stride. It’s the first year that youth bouldering competitions exist at the National and International level, and I am really excited to have placed second in my category at Nationals to earn myself a spot on the first Canadian Youth Bouldering National Team. It’s also the first year that I’ve been finding success on the open bouldering circuit, with multiple Tour de Bloc finals’ appearances (including one win) and placing fourth in the Alberta standings.”
We interviewed Funk in 2015 during a trip to Europe, where he eventually climbed his first 5.14. About projecting hard routes, he said, “Personally, I don’t have much experience road tripping or projecting at my maximum level, so I’m slowly trying to learn more about my own climbing and headspace when it comes to trying hard routes. That being said, I have been trying to do some ‘mini-projects’ so to speak: routes that are definitely quite hard for me and take a fair number of sessions to send, but nothing seriously next level. Every route I have sent so far, I did all the moves on my first time up the route.”
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