I managed to get along to White Spider for the first time last night so thought I'd right up some comments and impressions.
first off the place is big, its ropes and bouldering in seperate sections, its got a nice little cafe section and as they were knocking out cake at 50p each last night this is only going to get a thumbs up!
Facilities: as its a brand new facility, its clean and also currently unfinished. Changing rooms are being finished, walkways are taped off and clearly the crew are completing, BUT it is OPEN! For me, its SOO much closer than Craggy2 it has to worth trying and Richmond/Kingston/Esher/Hampton/Thames Ditton folks will find it nice and easy to get to.
Bouldering: out of their 3 bouldering areas only 2 are open and the 3rd is being done soon. The main area open is pretty much some vertical sections, theres bit of overhang and nobbly bits (o-er) but mosy of it is pretty straight, currently theres a number of different routes, circa 100 I think. and grades running easy to hard. The holds are new and the walls are clean so the holds have that skin removing texture you get on brand new holds. lol.
The second section is upstairs in a kind of balcony area above the main area, here there are a few more small sort of overhangs but again nothing too much.
In terms of difficulty of the routes I am no expert, only been climbing months not years, and I started on their low grades and worked up. By and large the easier ones seemed ok and as I tired and moved up the grades they got slightly harder as expected. I really enjoyed having some new routes to go at but didnt find them to taxing. I suspect this was partly me working my way up from zero rather than the routes being easy but perhaps folks who have done more there can comment. Only a couple of the routes up to about 5/6 font took a few efforts to complete but I suspect this will change as the place establishes itself and gets it self sorted. Would be interested what others think of the gradings?
So by and large I'm pretty pleased to have somewhere to climb on my doorstep, I think it'll improve with a bit more time as the place opens and would highly recommend the place to visit. Give it a few months and it has the potenial to be really great.
p.s. staff are all really friendly too! It all helps.
Anybody else been yet? Thoughts?
