BURSTWhen you talk to most climbers and ask them how they got their start, most will say it was in a climbing gym. They’ll tell you about the time they, on a whim, took advantage of a one-month first-time climber promo, or that they went to a friend’s birthday party at the gym, and the rest is history. A non-climber might hear this and think climbing gyms are inherently fun and captivating, but any climber who has visited a variety of climbing facilities can tell you that not every gym is equal. Holds on a wall do not automatically lead to good times.
Beginners turned climbers will tell you about the deep feeling of satisfaction they enjoy after solving the puzzle of a good boulder problem. Or the feeling of relief after trying a route over and over again, refining beta, building fitness, and sending. These experiences that make climbing so attractive don’t just happen – they’re curated by a team of skilled setters who work tirelessly to bring you joy on the wall.
We chatted with two head setters at Canadian gyms, Max Summerlee and Karlo King to learn about how they view their roles as setters for people who have little to no experience on the wall. 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.
King began by telling us, “I think the hardest thing to do in setting is to set easy grades while introducing technical movement and making the climbing interesting. I think every gym needs jug ladders, but it’s also important to have routes that offer more to teach new climbers new techniques and encourage them to come back and improve.”
We wanted to know if climbing gym setters are striving to create an environment that pumps everyone’s tires or if they are instead trying to teach the tough lessons required to become a better climber.
Summerlee reminded us that Climbing Business Journal released a statistic that roughly 66% of climbing gym customers do not return a second time. “So, yes, we want to pump them up and make them feel good,” he said. “I think there is a responsibility for setters to make a product that teaches people things, gets them interested in what they’re doing, and makes them want to come back for more.”
Summerlee continued, “For most people, climbing at a playground or up a ladder is what climbing is to them. Getting people to understand that climbing can be more is so important.”
King explained his team’s approach for teaching new movement: “I like to keep it very simple and focus solely on one movement. For example, if you’re trying to teach climbers to become fluid with heel hook traverses, you could pick really good holds and set on an easier angle. And if you want to teach this movement specifically, you don’t want to make it too complex by having it transition into another sequence. The aim is to teach movement in a basic way, and as climbers move up the grades, reintroduce them to the skills and combine them with other things they’ve learned along the way.”
Summerlee touched on more complexities and aspects that setters must be aware of: “Everybody comes with their own innate ability levels. We want to be able to cater to them where we can.” He continued, “So my job is interesting: I teach people things, I need to spark their interest, And I need to challenge them. I do think that challenge is part of the interest. If everything were super easy, nobody would come back.
“There’s also that age-old debate about grading and climbing and how that works. Some gyms are known for grading really hard, and some gyms are known for grading really soft. I think that there are merits to both of those systems. There’s the responsibility aspect of grading hard. I’m teaching somebody skills inside, respecting that they may go outside. I want to make sure that they aren’t throwing themselves in over their heads. There’s also the flip side of that, which is we’re not pretending like indoor climbing is rock climbing outside. At the end of the day, I want people to enjoy themselves.”
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