BURSTWhen climbing at a gym or even outdoors, it’s usually not long before we hear the common complaint of “it’s too reachy” or “this would be so much easier if I were taller”. These grievances are not to be minimized – a move that can be done completely statically for one climber could be a full-on dyno for another. This raises the question: how do climbing gym setters approach this challenge? Are they thinking about short climbers when they set a boulder or route? Are some problems just not meant for short climbers?
We interviewed two head setters at Canadian gyms, Max Summerlee and Karlo King, to better understand these questions. Summerlee is the Director of Routesetting at two gyms in Ontario – The Guelph Grotto in Guelph and The Core in Cambridge. King is the head setter of Climb Base5 in North Vancouver as well as a setter at Ground Up in Squamish.
Summerlee and King assured us that for them, creating movement for all body types is an ongoing conversation and never ceases to be front of mind. When asked about his approach to setting for different heights, Summerlee said, “That’s a challenge and a conversation that literally comes up all the time. We’re never not discussing it.”
“Sometimes it’s great setting for youth comps, for example, because you know the range of height is just within this little box,” added King with a grin. “So if you set something that’s kind of far away, they pretty much all are going to have to jump. In a commercial set, if you want to set a dyno for the average person, there’s gonna be some dude who’s like 6’2″, who’s just gonna like stand up and be like, ‘Yoink!’ That’s going to happen–it’s hard to avoid. You want to try to make things as fair as possible. And personally, I’m kind of tall, and that’s been a real challenge for me. I have to keep myself in check.”
The challenge, of course, isn’t simply that setters strive to make things fair for short climbers. The real challenge is that setters need to create routes and problems that are engaging for tall climbers, too, and everyone in between. It is not an easy task, but setters are acutely aware of the challenges and see it as their responsibility to create an accessible environment.
“There are things that you can do to mitigate it,” said King. “You can add some extra feet of the same quality, so everybody gets the same quality of footholds. Or, if there’s smearing involved, for example, you can put a volume on an angle, so the climber can smear along that whole volume.
“So there are ways to mitigate it, but yeah, sometimes, there’s just no way around it. Some moves are just going to be easier if you’re taller. I personally really like making tall people get scrunchy and making them curl up into a ball. I feel like tall people generally have an easier time, so it’s nice to make them scrunch up into uncomfortable little boxes.”
Summerlee addresses the issue similarly. “Outside, [a shorter person] is going to naturally find things harder than [someone taller] might. “What I want to do inside is recognize that we can compensate for that. My principle is, if I can add a bump hold to that large reach for the shorter person, but make the difficulty equivalent, then why wouldn’t I add that hold?”
When asked if some problems just aren’t for shorter climbers, Summerlee had this to say: “There are really good, really short rock climbers out there,” Summerlee continued. “But, unfortunately, what those people have to do is learn how to compensate for their reach by being more dynamic. But that’s not something that I want to ask of everybody.
“The truth of it is, a lot of setting is unfortunately built for the typical average male body. But by including other people on the [setting] team, by having other forerunners coming in, by having these really good touch points to be able to channel that empathy, I think we have a way to set lines that can be accessible to as many people as possible. But there will be climbs in the gym that are going to be dynamic, climbs that just can’t be done statically – that require, not that you’re tall, but that you can jump.
“And obviously, a tall person who has longer arms doesn’t have to jump as far, but the principle is that jumping, dynamic movement, is about your legs, not your arm power or your reach. It’s a challenge, and it will be something that people argue about and debate every single day, but it’s something we always keep in mind.”
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