Gym Climbing

I went to Climb Fit in Kirrawee when I was in Sydney over the weekend. It has to be over a decade since I went to a climbing gym. Sydney and surrounding suburbs actually have really good (if short) outdoor rock climbing and bouldering areas so usually when I go up to visit my Mum I pack just two pieces of training gear – running shoes and my bouldering pad with climbing shoes. That way, I keep life and transit between the south coast and Sydney as uncomplicated as possible while still maintaining my training schedule.

But, it was raining, as it was the last time I was in Sydney so I did not get on my project at Jannali and instead used a “Gladdy” Discover coupon at Climb Fit in Kirrawee. I had a blast, apart from being the old lady in the parking lot who needed the young lady to help them back out of a too tight parking spot, it was super fun.

Climbing gyms sure have changed a lot since the old days. In the 1980's, if you were a member of the local section of the Alpine Club you could climb at the University of Calgary climbing wall for free on Wednesday nights between 9 and 11 pm. As I got up every day at 5 am, starting to climb at 9 pm was a hard road to walk, and I only went infrequently. Frugal as ever, paying to climb when there was a free alternative was simply not an option. In the summer months, when the days are long in North America, we would often drive out to Wasootch, one of the few quickly accessible climbing training areas in the Rockies at that time, and climb out there in the evenings. It was whole lot more pleasant than the UofC wall which stank of foetid rock shoes.

The UofC climbing gym was dank, dark and smelly. The walls were plywood except for the slab wall which was cement. All the holds were rudimentary, bolted on pieces of wood or river stones stuck in cement. There were no marked routes, no bouldering cave, no lead routes. In fact, to climb there you had to bring your own rope and climb up a ladder, walk along a ledge at the top of the wall and set your own top-ropes.

Climb Fit at Kirrawee is another world altogether, so many routes, a big bouldering area with spongy thick pads at the base, a Kilter wall (which came first the Kilter wall or the Moon board?), four auto belays, lead routes, dozens and dozens of top-rope routes, an infra-red sauna, gym, change rooms, combination lockers, and the building is light and airy. A bit sweaty when you are working hard, but a far cry from the basement of the UofC kinesiology building.

I thought the bouldering routes would have V grades ,and the climbing routes Ewbank grades but instead both climbing and bouldering routes simply start at one and go up. There are probably pros and cons to that. Gym climbing is notoriously not very much like climbing outdoors. I have climbed with dozens of climbers who can onsight in the 20's in the gym but are stymied on a 16 outdoors because “where are the holds?” On the other hand, it is hard to gauge how hard you are climbing with no reference point to what I, at least, still think of as an outdoor sport.

Maybe, however, that is the point. Gym climbing is a sport unto its own and no longer simply somewhere climbers go to train when the weather is inclement or they can't get out to the crag. Certainly, at least from my sampling of Climb Fit, the routes are about as unlike as climbing in Australia as you can get. Here on the east coast, most climbing is on sandstone, and the predominant hold is the crimp, often a down-sloping crimp, but a crimp nonetheless. Strangely, despite spending three hours at Climb Fit, mostly climbing, hardly resting, I did not encounter a single crimp that feels anything like the type of climbing common around NSW. Contrast this to my home wall where I have a lot of small crimpy holds and a few homemade jugs. Most of my outdoor climbing is on small crimps so I train small crimps.

Climb Fit was great and without a prior engagement I would have stayed longer. However, as the person who tries to always see the other side, I wondered about turning an outdoor sport which involves all kinds of other skills and abilities – walking to the crag or the mountain, placing gear, evaluating the safety of the climb, setting belays, being in nature, to mention only a few – into another form of living like a zoo animal. Talking with my young relatives at lunch the day before, all of whom had been to a climbing gym at least once, they did not seem to even realise that climbing is an outdoor sport – or at least climbing was an outdoor sport. I have some misgivings with sanitising the experience, removing most of the challenges and discomforts and turning what for outdoor climbers is akin to a spiritual experience into training like a hamster on a wheel.

My nephew, who was dabbling in outdoor climbing, no longer climbs outdoors because he says (I have no idea of the veracity of this statement or whether it is merely a handy excuse for a lack of motivation) he “cannot afford to get hurt.” I, however, feel a bit like Messner in The Alpinist, that the possibility of getting hurt is part of the adventure, and some of the appeal of outdoor sports – skiing, climbing, kayaking – is being skilled enough to manage the risk and NOT get hurt. Of course, anyone who has done any sport climbing knows that almost all modern sport climbs are bolted such that getting hurt is actually highly improbable. The risk to your health of smoking, drinking and existing on junk food (all of which my nephew does) is much greater than clipping bolts around the Sydney crags.

I guess my overwhelming impression of the new modern climbing gym (if Climb Fit is an representative sample) is that the gym could be a great place to train, but could just as easily become a place where you escape from actual performance and spend a whole bunch of time faffing around the edges and not actually addressing the issues that would increase your own performance.

Some of this is human nature, it's easy to get sucked in to hanging with friends at the gym, half trying a couple of boulder problems or routes and spending the rest of the time talking yourself up; but the other half is it's actually super fun to swing around, cutting feet on overhanging routes with big jugs feeling jacked, but if most of your climbing is techy slabs requiring delicate footwork and precise moves, getting to feel hero strong is not going to help much.