Good to be Back at the Climbing Gym
It's summer, but be sure to support your local climbing gym to ensure they're around when indoor season is back
Photo by: Brandon Pullan at Bolder
I started climbing at the gym in 1998 after my friend Meghan told me that I should check out this place called Of Rock and Chalk, which hadn’t been open long. The Newmarket facility north of Toronto had boxy rooms and tall walls transformed from a grain elevator.
Over 20 years later, while holds and culture have changed, going to the gym still hits the same as it did back then. There’s an anticipation before I step foot in the building of what climbs I might power through, a stoke when I gear up as friends and partners cheer each other on, and a focus on improving my skills by having fun on routesetter-made lines.
I felt the withdrawals when gyms closed last year, so I made a small home board. I ordered a lot of Metolius holds, shaped a few pinches from wood and constructed an eight-foot by four-foot training wall. It kept my fingers active, but not in a million years could it replace a climbing gym.
So, when the gyms opened last week in Alberta, I jumped at the chance to make the rounds to whatever was open. Canmore Climbing Gym, Calgary Climbing Gym and Bolder are a few of the great places climbers can gather in Canada to train and share ideas.
Yes, we still wear masks and sanitize when we enter and after using weight lifting gear, but those few changes, which we’ve all become so used to, take nothing away from the experience of failing time and time again in front of a crowd.
Summer is usually a time when climbers take a break from the gym, so that they can head outdoors, but when your local gym opens, be sure to support them because every facility in Canada has taken a hit over the past 15 months.
It’s good to be back and the gym, and I can’t wait for more sessions in the next weeks, months and years to come.
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