While traveling in Northern OH, we stopped to spend a day at this lovely gem of a climbing gym…read more First off: staff is super friendly, helpful, generous with their time, and offer great customer service. We brought our own climbing equipment, and the check in process was easy. As is standard for first time climbing gym entries, we completed our waivers, purchased day passes, received a tour of the facilities (gorgeous), and completed certification tests for top top and lead. Staff was knowledgeable, supportive, and made it all a breeze while also making me feel like they are importantly attentive to everyone's safety. Gold stars.
Environment: As far as size go, they are probably getting right for their rural location, not huge, but big enough to offer a great variety of bouldering, top routes, and lead routes. If I counted right, they have 10 autobelays - 8 of which are on Castle Wall, and two that are on a "kid wall," which doesn't have any set routes, but has a plethora of holds for the littles to confidently work on their moves. Speaking of Castle Wall... I have to say I LOVE the artwork in this place. One of the employees told me that all the gorgeous murals on the wall were done by local artists with glow in the dark paint. Word is that they offer glow in the dark climbing on last Saturday of each month. That's gotta be sweet.
Climbing: they rate climbs using the terms Easy, Easy+, Mod-, Mod, Mod+, Hard-, Hard, Hard+. People will have opinions on that; some will like it, some won't. There is a conversion chart posted on one of the front walls, but it's all pretty broad in its generalizations. That said, we stuck to Easy+ through Mod routes today, and I quite enjoyed the setting. Shout out for useful foot chips and fun, creative routes.
Other details: the live aquarium in the entryway next to the huge cracker mural are gorgeous. Our kids loved the free arcade game that has all kinds of old school games, including Super Mario Bros, Paperboy, Tetris, etc. The yoga studio on the second floor is gorgeous. Love the floor to ceiling windows that span the room. Must be lovely to do yoga there.
The bathrooms are nice and clean! Also: plenty of cubby and lockers are available to stash your things. Looks like you can bring a lock for the lockers if you want to. They have 4-5 round tables in the entry room where people can have snacks. We were there for 6 hours, so we made use of them.
Now I'm wishing that I had taken more pics, but we were too busy having fun. Check out the website! The local community is lucky to have this gem! Nice work.
