5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Climbing Wall
When it comes to climbing wall design and maintenance, few voices carry the weight of experience that Skylar Pais brings to the conversation.
He started climbing over 25 years ago, and in 2006, he transformed his passion into his profession when he joined Eldorado Climbing.
Today, he serves as Eldorado Climbing's Senior Project Manager. Skylar has helped build and maintain hundreds of climbing walls across North America, developing a keen eye for what separates average walls from exceptional ones.
Skylar shares his top 5 easy improvements that can transform your climbing wall without breaking the bank or requiring major renovations.
Whether you operate a commercial gym or have a modest home wall, these insights from one of the industry's most experienced builders will help you create a more engaging, safe, and dynamic climbing experience.
1. Professional Route Setting
The quality of routes on a climbing wall is the single biggest factor affecting your users' climbing experience.
Facilities that lack knowledgeable staff and equipment to set high-quality routes can offer their users "climbing gym level" route setting by hiring a third party to do their setting.
2. New Paint
A fresh coat of paint on your climbing wall provides all the same benefits as repainting your house, with the added bonus that the climbing surface will climb better than it used to.
Dress up your climbing wall with a modern paint job and your staff and patrons will feel like they got a brand new climbing wall that will cost you only a fraction of the price.
3. New Handholds
No one likes climbing on old, greasy, polished handholds. New handholds feel and climb better. The evolution of climbing holds has changed the climbing experience tremendously over the past two decades.
The wide array of shapes and styles currently available makes for unlimited creativity in route setting.
4. Volumes/Feature Holds
Want to change the terrain on your climbing wall?
Modular volumes and feature holds are an economical way to create overhangs, slabs, dihedrals, arêtes, huecos, stalactites, and crack features without permanently changing the shape of your climbing wall.
5. Refurbishment
Much like remodeling your house, climbing wall refurbishment can take an old climbing wall and make it new at a fraction of the cost of building from scratch.
Options such as terrain additions, terrain reconfiguration, adjusting or adding top rope anchors, lead lines, and new components will all bring long-term value to your climbing wall.
Need help improving and maintaining your climbing wall?
Contact our team at Eldorado Climbing for a free consultation.