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Many of our guests are never aware of the hard work and thought that has gone into setting up the climbing facilities for each session that they attend.
What Route Setters Actually Do
Route setters create climbing routes by choosing, placing and bolting holds to a wall. They use special tools such as spanners and impact drivers and have access to hundreds of hold designs of holds to create each climbing problem from scratch.
How Routes Are Graded and Colour-Coded
Most climbing walls are set up using a colour-coded system, allowing climbers of different abilities to choose routes of a suitable difficulty. Information about the different grade systems used for indoor climbing and how to progress through them can be found on Mountaineering Scotland’s indoor climbing guidance.
How Often Routes Are Reset A useful reference for Climbing Walls is https://www.270climbing.com/climbing/.
A climbing wall can have a number of different routes up on it at any time, and most climbing walls have sections of the wall that are reset on a regular basis, so you don’t get to climb the point where you have learned every route and it has become second nature to climb them. In fact most routes are reset every few weeks, so you are always climbing different routes, which helps your climbing to develop properly.
Reading a Route Before You Climb
By reading a route before you go to climb it, you can make climbing the route a lot easier as you have read the hold sequence and thought about where your feet will go as well as your hands.
Giving Feedback to Route Setters
Many climbing gyms now include comment boards where climbers can give feedback on recently opened routes. Most climbing gyms also welcome climbers to speak with staff about problems recently opened on the climbing wall. e.g. “route currently coloured [X], wall [X], problem with hold [X] that spins”.
