Late last night, after a delicious dining experience involving beer and sausages, I headed out with a climbing companion to Adrenaline Climbing, way the hell out in Suwanee, northeast of Atlanta. This was my last, best hope for peace finding a decent rock gym in the area, and some folks had talked it up. Hopes were high.

Despite the lengthy drive, Adrenaline was situated in a shiny office park not too far off Interstate 85. When we arrived, the gym was nearly empty. In fact, were it not for the brightly-lit, flashing LED “Open” sign, I probably would have turned the car around instead of stopping. This was good, though, as a nice empty gym lets you explore the available features, unharried and at your own pace.

Adrenaline demands $14 for a day pass on a weekday, and $16 on a weekend. A decent decision, although I’ll probably limit my weekend visits. The slight disparity in price implies quite a bit of overcrowding. The gym does not, however, have lockers of any sort. Two unisex restrooms double as changing areas. Fortunately, with so few people around, I didn’t mind leaving my stuff beside the rough-worn overstuffed couch near the front of the gym.

The gym itself is a converted warehouse, far longer than it is wide. It’s probably about thirty or thirty-five paces across the short way, and easily double or triple that the long way. At the fore of the gym is a large, bulky, flat-topped wide arch. This is the gym’s bouldering feature and it goes up much higher than any other bouldering surface I’ve encountered. I’d guess it was a good 15 feet tall.

The bouldering routes are well-maintained and clearly taped; in fact, they go a step further than I expect and color-coded the route tape by difficulty. This makes locating appropriate routes much easier and is a feature I wish other gyms would adopt. The difficulties range from V0 through about V6, with a VB rank for beginners. There may be higher ranks - I wasn’t checking closely for them. Many of the routes seemed a bit sparse on feet, at least compared to what I’m used to. The bouldering feature is a “top-out” feature, meaning one is supposed to climb up onto the finished upper surface instead of merely grabbing a finish rock or zone. It’s an interesting variation that I haven’t encountered before.

Interestingly, the routes seem to be ranked a little lower than I would expect. There were a number of V1s that gave me considerable trouble, and most of the V2s I found myself incapable of completing. I also noticed that the routes had longer reaches and more dynos than I would expect for the routes I tried. One V1 was particularly notable; a middling V1 climb up to a pair of slightly-negative knobby holds, with the final hold being essentially a half-sphere the size of a golf ball. That final hold is also placed far far beyond my reach - a good four to six inches beyond - and there’s no good feet much above ankle level, aside from the two knob-holds, which are your only support at that point. Conceivably, I could mantle up on those holds and do some kind of crazy gymnastics balancing to get a foot onto one, but I never quite managed it.

The rest of the gym is split between top-roping and sport-leading surfaces. The walls had a good spread of routes between 5.7 and 5.12, and also had a decent amount of features built onto them. I’d like to give them a shot, once I get a belay partner.

Recommendation: Climb it. All in all, a good value, despite the drive. I’ll probably be making this place my regular location while I’m in Atlanta.

For my first after-work climbing experience, I led a group of relative novices deep into the heart of downtown Atlanta, seeking the warehouse dubbed “Atlanta Rocks! In-town.” It’s conveniently located for me, about 15-20 minutes by car along routes that aren’t terribly clogged with traffic. After some interesting automotive gymnastics, so as to avoid taking four vehicles in the place of one, we shot down the I-85 and pulled into an business park. Atlanta Rocks! is a tall warehouse amidst a number of low-slung industrial buildings, identifiable by the full parking lot and giant neon sign.

Inside, it’s a decently-sized gym, certainly well over 10,000 square feet of climbing space. However, they only utilize two out of the four walls, and there’s nothing really built out far from a wall. There’s a bouldering arch set in the middle of the climbing area, and a small caving alcove built within the facade of a top-roping section.

Signing in was simple - waiver, clipboard, pen, write down the usual info, pay the $15 day pass fee. A complimentary belay test was offered and refused - today was a bouldering day, as my companions were not entirely confident in their belaying skills. Fair enough. The locker room was simple, clean and professional. Standard sets of 12 double-height lockers on each side of a small room.

The climbing floor itself is surrounded by a tall lip, which serves both as impromptu seating and to keep the gym’s padding contained. This gym uses an unusual variety of padding, which I’ve only heard of once before, from Mundy up in Seattle. It’s essentially black rubber chips, the same general size and shape as woodchips, piled several inches deep. It works pretty well, although it has the nasty tendency of flying into your chalk bag if you’re not careful.

The bouldering arch is where we started. As is becoming an unfortunate trend here in Atlanta, there are no formal routes marked on the arch itself. Like Wall Crawler, there are a bunch on unranked traverses marked with numbered tape. Aside from that, there’s no tape or other markings on the rocks themselves at all.

Undeterred, I introduced the climbing group to Add-On, which went fairly well. I had to take special care to not be an asshole, but there were sufficiently good holds and feet to make the routes we created generally accessible to all. Some impromptu general clambering around also made for a good workout. The rocks and backing were in excellent shape; I was rather surprised at how well-cleaned the rocks themselves were. Almost chalk-free, really.

I decided to try the caving alcove next. I personally hadn’t used one before; it’s somewhat similar to the extreme overhang sections and arches on a normal bouldering area, but you can get damn near horizonal and almost always have a wall on one side of you to push off of. I managed to clamber from the far, low end of the cave to the entrance. Given that overhang work is my weak spot, I felt pretty accomplished for having done it.

Overall, I enjoyed Atlanta Rocks! In-town, but the lack of taped bouldering routes was disappointing. There’s one more gym in the area I intend on trying before settling into a membership. If I can get some folks belay-certified, then AR could be a decent option.

Recommendation: Visit it. If you’re all about boulders, this is probably not the best place unless you play a lot of Add-On or like making up your own routes. The top-ropes looked pretty good and they had a cool top-ropable “naturals column” that was almost entirely made of sculpted features.

I’ve been down here in Atlanta for less than a week, but as my hand has healed from the mistake that was ARC,
I was chomping at the bit to get back on some rocks. You know, see what The South could offer. After checking the canonical gym lists, the closest gym to my lodgings turned out to be the Wall Crawler Rock Club. I headed over shortly after they opened - noon on a Sunday.

I arrived at a nicely-painted building on the side of a minor highway, situated across the street from the commuter railway tracks in a mini-mall. The gym’s neighbors are, appropriately enough, a coffee shop and a chiropractor. The outside of the building is nicely painted with a huge sunset-themed mural.

Step inside and be greeted by… a cavernous open space, painted sky blue. Two of the walls have been set up for top-roping, one covering only half the length of the space, the other covering three-quarters. A bouldering cave, probably about fifteen to twenty paces on a side, is set up behind the front desk.

When I arrived, the gym was almost empty aside from a small group of four clustered in the back of the top-rope area. The attendant was in the shop, which is secluded, along with the locker rooms, in a hallway near the bouldering cave. Fifteen dollars later, I had a day pass. Curiously, the gym did not ask for a liability waiver. Oh well, just hope nothing gets broken I guess?

The locker room, which seems to also double as storage, is a spare affair. A simple metal stand of eight lockers has been plopped down in a bathroom, with an old desk and armchair provided for seating. I managed to snag a locker and change out. Now for the boulders!

The bouldering cave at Wall Crawler is a u-shaped affair, with a section of one U-leg forming a very low arch, and another high arch bridging the tips of the U. Rocks are affixed haphazardly along both the inner and outer sides of the U, save where it abuts the outer walls of the gym. Most rocks have been taped with some bizarre hybrid system - single-stripe, stripe-with-drawn-design, and stripe-with-substripe. Not too easy to read, but not as bad as ARC.

Unfortunately, reading the tape is less necessary than I’ve come to expect in most bouldering areas. While there’s a lot of tape strewn around, about half of it doesn’t seem attached to complete routes. Those complete routes that are taped aren’t always clearly marked with a difficulty rating. There’s also two long marathon bouldering sequences which are taped and numbered sequentially, forming long traversal chains that one is supposed to attempt. Curiously, they both seem to lack footholds leading me to assume they’re All-Feet routes. Still, marathon traverses are fun.

I must, however, protest this gym’s corruption of the difficulty scale. Some of my new coworkers warned me that the gym seemed to clump difficulty ratings together, and that the ratings themselves were not entirely consistent. Instead of the standard Vermin/Hueco “V0 and Up”, this gym has a rating system of “VB, VE, VM, VH, VS” - Beginner, Easy, Moderate, Hard, and “Sick.” I think I saw two VBs, one VE and four VMs.

I ended up spending my hour playing with parts of the mega-traverses, trying out a couple of the taped routes, and then improvising a bunch of stuff on the masses of orphaned rock. The VE I tried wasn’t too hard, but I didn’t manage to complete a VM. The feet seemed very lacking throughout, and a couple lacked feet altogether.

On the way out, I did pick up a nice cheap bottle of water (a single buck) - a pleasant change from back west. Still, I can’t really advise this gym for serious use - it’s too small to be worth the travel for the hardcore. It’s also definitely not for use by newer climbers, as my coworkers are, and the bouldering area seems poorly maintained. Perhaps the top-ropes were better.

Recommendation: Pass. If it were down the block, I’d use it as a casual neighborhood gym, but it’s not. If a climbing buddy from out of town came to visit, this certainly wouldn’t be one of our stops.

Also known as ‘The Arc‘ and located, eponymously, in scorching Arcadia, California, I had pretty high hopes that this would be a good gym for bouldering while I’m stuck in LA. Unfortunately, I went at high Noon, at the apogee of the inland desert heat. This made for a less-than-sterling experience, but I did still manage to eke out an hour before tearing some skin.

The gym itself is a semi-hidden affair, a small warehouse behind a physical therapy center off a divided avenue in affluent Arcadia. There’s a bit of parking available, but it proved to be a non-issue as mine was one of two vehicles occupying the half-dozen spaces closest to the building. A low-slung edifice, one would never know it was a climbing gym, as opposed to, say, a garment warehouse, were it not for the open garage-style doors on either end, revealing plasticine rocks and padded mats instead of stacked sweaters. Large letters in the rear also identify it, although this does not help the casual passerby attempting to locate the damn place.

The staff was politely friendly and a day pass was a reasonable 15 dollars. Upon inquiring, I was informed that there exist no real lockers, nor a locker room. The restrooms are available for changing purposes, but that’s about it. There’s the first warning flag. After donning my shoes and chalk bag, I scanned the walls for a good starting point.

ARC is a pretty traditional medium-sized bouldering-focused gym inside. Nondescript blue carpeting, affixed to a half-inch or inch of firm padding; super-firm black crash pads everywhere. The east and west sides hold the colored plastic rocks, which are mounted on faux-rock-finished wooden backboards. North and south are the large garage doors, which are mercifully kept open, allowing the sporadic Inland Empire breezes to moderate the swelter within. The gym is about fifty paces and vaguely square.

While most of it appeared to be boulder-centric, the northwestern section, which had a large arete protruding a good fifteen paces towards the center of the room, was kitted out for some short sport-leading. The gym, on whole, is not very tall - five meters or so, perhaps six in the leading area. A bit higher than I’m normally comfortable bouldering, but not terrible. Most of the walls have a considerable degree of incline to them, from moderate to severe. I was disappointed to find rather few vertical, balancing-heavy problems. Most seemed more about good grip and proper incline technique.

There were quite a large number of routes available on each wall, with a decent difficulty spread between V0 and V6; the highest I noticed was a V12, but I wasn’t particularly looking that high. I also saw a VB. Unfortunately, the gym seems to be at a loss when it comes to consistently marking routes. Some are entirely determined by the color of the rock, while others are taped with a variety of schemes. Some routes are single-color taped, others are marked by a pair of colored tapes, while still others have colored tape with a symbol drawn on it.

I found the difficulty of the routes at ARC strange. V1s I could conquer without issue; they were, for the most part, unchallenging. The V2s I tried, however, were extremely difficult. I don’t recall finishing a single one, and could get to the three-quarter mark at farthest. The grips were smaller than I would expect for a V2, the reaches longer and the footholds sparser. Having not climbed in the area before, my recent illness, and a month of not climbing could all also have made them more difficult than I would expect.

I climbed for about an hour, but towards the end the heat was getting to me. When a particularly sharp rock sliced into my left middle finger, scraping off a dime-sized chunk of flesh at the third joint, I decided to call it for the day. In the end, I wasn’t particularly impressed with this smaller-sized gym. If it was nearby, I might consider going again, but the 30-minute drive and heat don’t endear it to me. One good note, especially considering the environs, is that a half-liter of bottled water is only a dollar.

Recommendation: Pass. Hopefully there are other, better gyms in the LA area that I’ve yet to discover.