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.