The Business of Climbing

I've been on the road a bunch the last two weeks, and thanks to websites like IndoorClimbing.com, I've been able to appease my climbing habit wherever I've gone. I find it interesting how different gyms are setup, how they mark their routes, and how they rate them. So -- here's a little blurb about where I've been and what I thought...

• the gym:
  The Front Climbing Gym - Salt Lake City, UT
• the walls:
  For those who are familiar with the Philadelphia Rock Gym -- the Front has a similar setup. A long, high-ball bouldering wall with a smaller area for toproping. I don't recall seeing any lead climbing. The walls were lightly textured -- it looked like wood covered with some kind of resin. I definitley was a bit edgy climbing to the top of the wall without a spotter -- the bouldering wall seemed to be 15 or so feet high. It prevented me from pushing myself beyond my range, as I flashed most every climb I attempted.
• the routes:
  They'd had a comp recently, so a lot of the comp point values were still on the wall -- and that was fun to climb on. But their typical rating system is a series of colored dots: it was something like "yellow: v0-v1, green: v2-v3, blue: v4-v5, red: v6+. I wasn't a big fan of such a loose rating scale. They have something similar at Vertical Reality in NJ. Maybe I'm too dependent on ratings -- I guess you can look at it two ways: 1.) I like to use the ratings to judge how good I'm getting. or 2) I hold myself back by only attempting things that are of a particular grade, and no higher.... I'd like to think its the 1st, but sometimes I know its the 2nd.
• the other stuff:
  They had a dog at the gym! Very friendly, liked to fetch. It was cool. They had a full weight gym too, and according to their website have yoga and pilates classes. I think that's awesome. I'd love it if our gym had that. I need to do yoga. Maybe I'll sign up when I get back home.
• the gym:
  Rockreation - Salt Lake City, UT
• the walls:
  Rockreation makes a GREAT use of the space they have. They've got some great bouldering -- lots of angled walls, and lots of interesting holds with creative routes. There's a cave, a traverse, a low arch and very nicely textured walls -- some of the holds are even built into the wall, which was fun to play with. All I did was boulder -- but it looked like they had some great lead climbing routes too - the lead area wasn't very big -- so the routes were really crowded, but it looked like a good challenge, with some great angles.
• the routes:
  The routes were all rated on the standard V-scale. And they seemed to be rated pretty similarly to other gyms. I got winded very quickly while I was in Salt Lake (its the first time I've really noticed the whole altitude, thin-air thing), so I don't think I was climbing as hard as I could. But I had a great time.
• the other stuff:
  They have a full weight gym too, and are right next door to Black Diamond.
• the gym:
  Atlanta Rocks (Intown) - Atlanta, GA
• the walls:
  The walls at Atlanta Rocks were nice. Highly textured, lots of angles. They had a cave and a free-standing bouldering wall too. As for lead climbing -- they've got routes that go up about 30 feet and then across the ceiling another 30 feet -- talk about endurance. Unfortunately... they had an icky floor system -- it was the ripped up tire stuff. bleck.
• the routes:
  They recently had a comp at the gym, so they said they had just taken down all the problems and were in the process of putting them all up again. So there wasn't an abundance of routes -- but the ones that were there, were fun. I don't like how they mark their routes though -- each of their bouldering "routes" are simply defined by the color of holds used. No tape. All the orange holds make up a route... all the yellow holds, blue holds, etc. I would think that limiting your routes to a color system would really limit the creativity a route setter can have in creating routes. None of the routes are graded either... so I had the same issues with that as with the routes at The Front.
• the other stuff:
  They too had a weight lifting area. But the thing I really liked to play on -- was their rock climbing treadmill. You could use some pre-defined programs or manually adjust the angle of the wall and the speed of it. I found that I used my arms WAY too much. And I really felt like a hamster. I've run on treadmills and elliptical machines many a time, and never felt like I was running and running and getting nowhere (even though, that's exactly what's going on) -- but it was certainly a strange sensation to be climbing higher and higher and still be only a foot and a half off the ground.

Responses[1]

Posted by Jessica on May 3, 2006 12:06:29 AM EDT #