Touchstone Climbing: Climbing

At Touchstone, we're passionate about climbing. With walls designed for world competition and kids' birthday parties alike, we're confident that just about everyone will walk away with a smile on their face. Climbing adds a mental element to an otherwise physical activity. Just about everyone can climb. It's a matter of picking a degree of difficulty that challenges you at the level you desire.

How does it work? The climbing walls contain hidden nuts - tens of thousands of the little buggers. Climbing holds have a hole to accept a bolt, which fastens to the nut in the wall. Billions and billions of possibilities exist for routes. At Touchstone we have a full-time course setting crew. Each week we 'strip' a portion of each gym, wash the holds, and put up new routes. We strive to keep turnover fast enough to give our users something new to try, yet slow enough to give them time to 'work' out a problem. Routes are designated by colored tape, which we work hard to place in a manner that makes the route obvious while climbing - note: try modifying the taped route to either increase or decrease the difficulty rating.

A subjective difficulty level is assigned to each route. Roped routes use the Yosemite Decimal System, in which every number is preceded by a '5' to indicate technical climbing - followed by a dot - followed by a number from 1 to 14 which indicates increasing difficulty. Hence, a climb rated 5.3 is relatively easy while a 5.13 is the domain of the elite. Unroped routes - bouldering routes - are designated with a 'V' grade, in which the number following the 'V' indicates increasing difficulty. The difficulty is subjective and often arrived at via consensus. While we 'run' the routes with several experienced climbers to come up with a grade, we are sometimes off.

Climbing the Prow

How does indoor climbing relate to the outdoor version? Climbing encompasses tremendous variety, first off. Some people tackle peaks at high altitude, others climb frozen waterfalls, some spend days or weeks on sheer rock faces that stretch thousands of feet straight up. Even within the domain of short climbs entirely on rock, we generally differentiate between 'traditional' or 'trad' climbing, and 'sport' climbing. Traditional climbing involves the placement of 'protection' in the case of a fall, which necessarily involves greater focus on the safety aspects of the sport than when all the protection is in place. Sport climbing generally has pre-placed bolts equipping a route, allowing a climber to put almost all focus on climbing performance. Indoor climbing is very close to sport climbing, and very different from everything else.

The discussion of protection is relatively moot for most gym climbers. Protection is for the benefit of the lead climber (generally). Once a rope is up there, the protection issue is gone. Many gyms, and all Touchstone gyms, offer lead climbing, in which climbers can advance their rope up the route as they climb. Only very experienced climbers will pass our required lead test, due to the increased risk of the activity. Most gym climbers use the pre-placed ropes, called 'top-ropes.' With a top-rope, a belayer manages the rope from the ground as his or her partner climbs. Should the climber slip from the holds, the belayer will ensure that the climber falls only a small amount - generally the stretch of the rope, or just a few inches.

Climbing is a social activity. We generally need a partner for roped climbing. And a bunch of advice, and spotters, make all the difference in bouldering. Take a minute to listen in on a conversation or two, and you'll undoubtedly realize you're climbing next to some very accomplished athletes. Most are quite humble and you'd never know.

Getting started? Check out our services page to get further description. We have all the equipment you need for rent. As an adult, you'll want to come with a friend and take a Belay Safety Class, after which you'll be free to climb on your own. Kids may be interested in a number of options from a party to an after-school program teaching advanced techniques. We also offer classes and clinics that will help you improve your strength, your conditioning, and your technical skills. And if you choose to take the next step and try climbing outside, we also organize introductory classes that get you out on real rock and teach you the skills you need to head out on your own.