Different indoor climbing walls
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I know there is a plethora of climbing wall companies out there, just wanted to hear people's opinions as to their preferences for and experiences of different walls. |
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I HATE the heavily textured Walltopia walls. All else being equal I would always choose a different gym ether than climb on the cheese grater. |
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I'm all for Eldo Walls. |
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I love Walltopia. I think their model is great. I also love the use of colored holds instead of tape. It is possible to provide a quality product with tape, such as done at Movement, but very few gyms get it right. On the other hand, I dont think I have been to one gym who uses colored holds that I did not like. |
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bump for more input |
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+1 on colored holds vs tape. Full padded floors is great. Maybe community brushes. Also a good varity of grades on all walls. Example: an easy, short, slab wall should have high grade climbs and an over hanging cave should have low grade climbs. |
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I hate textured walls. |
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Textured walls are, really, overkill - rough sandstone provides less friction. Also, texture is really good for accumulating shoe rubber, blood, etc. |
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+1 for tape. unless you are a mega-gym the size of an airplane hangar with an unlimited budget, taping the routes allows a greater variety of holds to be used. |
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SOFT TEXTURE AND ZILLION HOLDS. new and old clients intuitively start to build their own problems. |
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The first gym I climbed in had plywood walls, covered in paint with sand mixed in. The gym I'm at now is rockwerx, with a fairly slick paint over what seems to be textured plaster on the plywood. Originally I preferred the paint and sand, because it made smearing so much easier, but now I've gotten used to the slicker rockwerx texture and I'm fine with it. |
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Walltopia.... the best IMHO. |
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When it comes to walls only two things count. Good quality holds and great route setters, everything else is aesthetics. Best wall I ever trained on was simple plywood at set angles, 10, 25 35 50 degrees but the problems were amazingly set. |
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Vertical Solutions does amazing work. |
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Euan Cameron wrote:When it comes to walls only two things count. Good quality holds and great route setters, everything else is aesthetics. Best wall I ever trained on was simple plywood at set angles, 10, 25 35 50 degrees but the problems were amazingly set.+1 I have been on some super textured made to look pretty walls and find they just get in the way of a good route setter. The more complex the angels and stuff are on the wall the more restrictions you have setting routes. But than most gyms are not really designed for real climbers. Alot of them are made to try to get random people to come in who will never touch real rock. So it makes sense to make something to attract them. |
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Spend $$ on good rout setters and set new routs regularly |
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+1 for Vertical Solutions. I climbed in Ogden and it was weird at first but I grew to love it. I have since moved away and really miss it. |
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I used to think texture was awesome until I left a fair amount of myself on the wall when I fell. Taped routes are fine if they are set regularly. I love watching newer people come in and try to do a 5.12 mantle off of a foothold on a 5.8 route because the tape has been stripped from the route. |