Touchstone Climbing: Background

Touchstone Climbing Inc. began in 1994 as a dream of Mark and Debra Melvin to bring indoor rock climbing to San Francisco. After scouring the city for the proper location and raising start-up capital, they opened Mission Cliffs in 1995 in the Mission District of San Francisco. The new gym captured the imagination of the city and immediately set a new standard for indoor climbing facilities world-wide. Within a month of its opening, Mission Cliffs hosted the sport climbing National Championship competition, introducing climbers from around the country to what was quickly heralded as the most spectacular facility in the world.

In 1996, Touchstone purchased Class 5, a struggling indoor climbing gym in San Rafael. After renovating much of the facility - including the construction of impressive new climbing walls and a bouldering area - the gym became the second of the Touchstone facilities.

In 1997, Touchstone acquired CityRock of Emeryville, one of the first indoor climbing gyms built in the country. A fully-integrated membership system allowed reciprocal use of a Touchstone facility by the full northern Bay Area population of over two million people.

Realizing that the East Bay market was underserved by CityRock's moderate size, Touchstone embarked on an ambitious project to build a new gym that was nearly 3 times as large. Berkeley Ironworks was completed in 2000, adding fitness components to club design and revolutionizing the concept of what a climbing gym could be.

In 2001, Touchstone purchased an historic building just north of downtown Sacramento. After extensive renovations, Sacramento Pipeworks opened its doors in 2001, following the Berkeley Ironworks model of full fitness programming in addition to superior quality climbing terrain.

Touchstone expanded to Concord, with a full climbing and fitness facility, and 2003 saw the opening of our first bouldering-only gym in the downtown San Jose.

2004 saw the acquisition of Stone Age Climbing, a well established and reputable climbing hold and accessory manufacturer, now located at the Sacramento Pipeworks site.

Touchstone is poised to open its 7th facility in the fall of 2007 – Great Western Power Company. In the center of the downtown’s vibrant restoration of art deco buildings, this former steam generation plant is the kind of building that Touchstone patrons over the years fall in love with (as did we).

Touchstone Climbing Inc. is arguably the most well-known indoor climbing operation in the world. We have hosted more national accredited roped climbing competitions than any other organization. Even as we endeavor for excellence among climbers, our business is to serve the public. In 2006 we had just short of 500,000 user visits in our facilities, 18,000 kids in parties, and 1600 kids-in-need benefiting from our community service events.