Mecanim solution for climbing ladder

Hi! I have 2D game and for animations I use built in Mecanim system. Now I want my charater climb ladders like this: when player moves character up or down the climbing animation is played. But when characters stops I want to freez him in current position.

Currently I am setting Animator speed to 0, when character stops moving, but I would like to know if there is some better solution based on Mecanim features. For example, if there is way how to jump into blend tree based on progress of climbing animation?