[Jim]

was going to post similar regarding broughton.
You can't recreate the type of training you get here (feet on and finger strength, not throwing between plastic jugs whilst cutting loose!)
It just a massive shame that it right on the other side of Manchester to where I now live and thats its probably going to be knocked down at some point in the future

[dave]

I think there's an element of truth that the current trend for plastering walls with volumes is getting a bit overused now. I'm pretty sure that if you took two identical twins and gave them a year to train, both putting in identical effort and identical wall time, and one was only allowed to train on volume walls at the Works and the other only allowed on the wave at the Foundry, and then let them both have a font trip or a week of work on the grit I'd put my mortgage on the fact the foundry guy would be the one getting up the hardest shit. And not cos he won't have to queue for problems at the foundry either.

[account_inactive]

Now you're confusing modern bolt on walls and too many volumes.
Jim, with all due respect, you're talking balls about broughton

[ghisino]

Now you're confusing modern bolt on walls and too many volumes.

+++++++++++++++1

the truth is a routesetter can do more or less whatever (s)he likes on a bolt on wall, this isn't exactly true on a featured one.

the "problem" lies more in setting for training vs setting with other priorities (fun, trend, competition needs, etc)

[Monolith]

I very seriously nearly cried the day I saw the old Awesome Walls resin wall in bits in the skip. I grew up with this thing and as an addition to the board and conventional problems, it was brilliant. Also had the only dyno in the world that I could do but Crouch couldn't

I'm welling up thinking about it. 

[ianv]

Modern plastic-pulling climbers are frequently massively strong and fit, yet there has been no increase in the median route grade climbed in the last 30 years. Modern walls are rubbish for training people to climb on real rock.

But the grade for the upper quartile (those that use the new style walls to their full potential) has increased significantly. 8b just doesn't seem to be such a big deal any more, but it was 20 odd years ago. Also, the median grade is likely to be kept low by the influx of new climbers.

[i.munro]

My experiences of going to climbing walls in London ... the guys behind the counter said that a large proportion of their custom is from people that have never climber outdoors.

If climbing walls are to make a profit and therefore stay open and provide a training environment and resource for outdoor climbers as well, then they have to make sound business decisions. They have to cater for all their customers needs,

Both of the above are true but IMO cant be used to justify the  poor training facilities that London walls provide since these customers don't appear from thin air.
Some London walls spend a great deal of time & money on marketing to people who might otherwise not show any interest in climbing. Their subsequent preferences are  determined by what they are offerred/told by those same walls. There is then a feedback loop setup  where people only want to climb on jugs because all they were offered on starting was ladders of jugs so that's what they're good at. The next generation then start on even larger jugs & so on...








 

[account_inactive]

My experiences of going to climbing walls in London ... the guys behind the counter said that a large proportion of their custom is from people that have never climber outdoors.

If climbing walls are to make a profit and therefore stay open and provide a training environment and resource for outdoor climbers as well, then they have to make sound business decisions. They have to cater for all their customers needs,

Both of the above are true but IMO cant be used to justify the  poor training facilities that London walls provide since these customers don't appear from thin air.
Some London walls spend a great deal of time & money on marketing to people who might otherwise not show any interest in climbing. Their subsequent preferences are  determined by what they are offerred/told by those same walls. There is then a feedback loop setup  where people only want to climb on jugs because all they were offered on starting was ladders of jugs so that's what they're good at. The next generation then start on even larger jugs & so on...

Where is your evidence for this? I'd bet that the average level is up over the years with most people not dicking around climbing VS on jugs and going straight to steep overhanging walls.
Bolt on holds do come in smaller sizes than jug.....for an example of this go to BoulderUK. It's route setters that are choosing jugs and volumes.

[i.munro]

Evidence? Tricky. Best I can offer is the difference in  setting style between London and walls I've visited elsewhere.

[jimbob]

Modern Walls depend on how good the setting is,  and I I have to say I wish us climbers in Manchester had a massive lead wall like the one at Ratho, which is ace.

Old skool concrete walls like the brilliant Broughton, have a draw which modern walls don't have.  The permanence of the concrete holds mean that a climber can chart their progress over a long time, some current devotees have been cranking at Broughton for twenty years! Like other walls of its generation, it has become, in effect, an indoor crag.  And it's pure class.  You actually have to climb it, look for foot holds, use your climbing brain, get hold of real bits of rock, find resting positions,   and use proper technique.  It is a climbers climbing wall and for me offers the perfect antidote to pulling on plastic blobs,  and will set anyone up in good stead for any British limestone crag. 

It's still open,  just,  and  can be climbed on Tuesday evenings and daytime any other day.

[Stubbs]

Slightly (okay massively) off topic but you guys seem to know London walls quite well - gonna find myself in central London for the next few days for work and will likely have Tuesday evening free, so which wall is the best for a few hours bouldering entertainment - both in terms of access from Regents Park area and the quality of fun I can have?

Cheers, Stu

Hi Stu, just to echo what Thesiger said, Westway ( http://www.westwaysportscentre.org.uk/climbing/ )is your closest and will have enough bouldering in the back room to keep you busy for a visit, but if you have a bit of extra time Biscuit Factory ( http://archclimbingwall.com/biscuit/map/ ) is a great facility and a nicer space to climb in, about half an hour on the tube by the look of it.

[rginns]

Modern Walls depend on how good the setting is,  and I I have to say I wish us climbers in Manchester had a massive lead wall like the one at Ratho, which is ace.

Old skool concrete walls like the brilliant Broughton, have a draw which modern walls don't have.  The permanence of the concrete holds mean that a climber can chart their progress over a long time, some current devotees have been cranking at Broughton for twenty years! Like other walls of its generation, it has become, in effect, an indoor crag.  And it's pure class.  You actually have to climb it, look for foot holds, use your climbing brain, get hold of real bits of rock, find resting positions,   and use proper technique.  It is a climbers climbing wall and for me offers the perfect antidote to pulling on plastic blobs,  and will set anyone up in good stead for any British limestone crag. 

It's still open,  just,  and  can be climbed on Tuesday evenings and daytime any other day.

 

[mrjonathanr]

Jim, with all due respect, you're talking balls about broughton

I think he's right.

[slackline]

@CastleClimbing @gaz_parry featureless... pic.twitter.com/kLv9UdnOfk]https://twitter.com/tricky_hudson/status/311024032059367424]@CastleClimbing @gaz_parry featureless... pic.twitter.com/kLv9UdnOfk

[gme]

I couldn't disagree with the original poster more. Modern climbing walls are far superior to the walls in the past in every way. Much as i think the wave is a great wall i think to say its good for technique is a load of bollocks. Follow a well set circuit around the works and you will learn far more technique than spending a day on the wave or any other old school wall. I think the comp wall is a bit specialised but that's due to how its set rather than the physical structure of the wall.

I think we can easily get nostalgia mixed up with quality, i spend days having an amazing time on the berghaus wall in Newcastle but its not a great wall, there was a good scene and it was a focal point for the NE climbers, but its not a great wall.

An interesting point about the wave is that i believe it was one of the first bouldering wall to set a trend of modern bolt on holds type walls. Until that point there had been a heavy reliance on features and fixed holds on the walls, i can remember Jerry fighting very hard to get the wall as unfeatured as possible to allow flexibility in the setting of problems. Surely a precursor to where things have got to now. Go and have a close look at it, there are not that many features.

I now climb on walls far more than i climb outside due to time restraints and think that, for pure enjoyment, they are so much better than before. However if i was still a serious climber i would spend all of my time on the motherboard/ schoolroom or similar as indoors is for getting strong and therefore you want to eliminate all use of technique.
Outside is where you learn to climb and no wall can ever replace that.

[fried]

I have to agree, I have fond memories of the bendcrete wall in Purbrook but my new wall in Paris blows it out of the water.

I think it depends on the route setter and the amount the wall is prepared to spend on holds. I get the impression that some walls are tied to one hold manufacturer, but my wall is free to choose and they are prepared to pay out for decent varied holds.

[Durbs]

At Craggy2, they have a feature wall (3 in fact; Grit, Slate & Lime) and they barely get touched. There’s a book of problems people have set, and it’s nice to warm up on – but for regulars, it’s 3 faces which could have offered 3 ever-changing panels.

For uber-newbs, it’s maybe an introduction to real rock insofar as having to find holds, not look for coloured ones. But in terms of actual training for outdoors, I think there’s more merit in building strength and technique on plastic then trying to learn certain techniques you only encounter outdoors. Creative route-setting can also involve jams, and several indoor routes have required smears. So aside from route finding (which you don’t really get as it’s often a case of choosing what not to use to make a route harder if challenging yourself on a feature wall) I’m not sure what else they really offer.

I guess an alternative is a features wall with bolt-ons which they have at several walls – but the issue with these is regulars learn where the best foot placements are and this can make the routes much easier.

I reference regulars as you assume the one-time visitors aren’t likely to go outdoors, so their need for outdoor specific training (whatever that is) is pretty low.

[i.munro]

At Craggy2, they have a feature wall (3 in fact; Grit, Slate & Lime) and they barely get touched.

I'd like to think there is a place for well executed featured walls.
Those 3 & indeed the one at the Castle however were never any good as IMO they tried to cater to too wide a range of abilities.
 

[Pantontino]

FWIW I like both styles. I boulder a lot at the Indy wall just across the bridge from Bangor in Llanfair PG.

They've got a Livingstone curved resin wall and a centrepiece comp style section (flat panels and volumes). The standard of route setting here is the best I've ever encountered but I still really enjoy climbing on the resin wall. The permanent feature lines are superb and have not polished significantly despite being over 20 years old. There are bolt ons on it too, but I always prefer to do 'features for feet' on set problems as it feels more like real climbing.

When I first started going to walls back in the 80s (Richard Dunn sports centre in Bradford was a favourite) all problems were invented eliminates. I really enjoyed that creative process at the time, but these days just follow the colour dots of set problems - as an antidote to this, getting stuck into some semi eliminate lines on the feature wall is very enjoyable and absorbing. The climbing style is very different and much more subtle - I like that (probably because I'm crap at jumping between blobby pinches!)

[chummer]

We (The Indy Wall, on Anglesey) are due for a big refurbishment this summer. We have a modern free standing plywood boulder and one resin featured one (with bolt ons), the latter is over 13 years old now and is pretty well worn. One of the options was to panel out this resin featured wall which was quite an attractive proposition.

However, after some thought I realised that this outdated yet great bit of wall could actually be a unique asset to us, providing something different to our competition, as well as this it is a great wall for coaching, especially for footwork when using features only for feet.

So instead of getting rid of our resin wall we are going to re-feature it, add more t-nuts and repaint it. Well done us!  This is of course could be an option for the other resin walls out there.

My point is that when done well (as already pointed out) such featured walls with bolt ons can be a real asset offering something a bit different from the generic panelled wall and one can never underestimate how much new or more novice climbers love to climb on something that they see as like the real thing, even if they are mainly climbing on bolt ons. In fact, with well set problems the resin wall is popular with most of our users and is a welcome break from some from the more power orientated steep panel problems. We mainly have mainly easier problems (up to Font 6c) on the resin wall with a mix of bolt on tracking problems and features for feet. Admittedly there are very few folk who climb only on features. 


Basically I think having a mix of a well thought out resin boulder with bolt ons and one panelled boulder will offer wall users a far better resource to our users than two panelled walls. I also think that this gives the wall a little more character.

[chummer]

Whoops...posted that before Panton posted his, apologies for any repetition..

[TerryLines]

Hi Duncan,

I understand a few of the staff & customers at the Castle have made the same argument and got nowhere, so the climbing wall management are certainly aware of the issue, they just don't care, or rather, care more about keeping a horde of low-grade indoor boulderers happy.

I don't think it's even necessarily the merits of featured-walls versus bolt-ons, as every single redevelopment they've done over the last few years has been to make the bouldering steeper and less technically-varied.

To be fair to the Biscuit Factory, on the few times I've been it seemed like the setting was a step up from the Castle and Westway.

[Ti_pin_man]

I've been thinking about this question this morning and think there are some comparisons with the mountain biking world... at the time there was a lot of debate and negativity towards the appearence of Trail centres, forests and routes made specifically for mountain biking... lots of mountain bikers rubbished them. 

10 years on and most mountain bikers have used trail centres and generally they are positivly viewed, these man made routes provide convenient, weather proof, mountain biking, they attract new blood to the sport, money into local businesses.

They are now largly just incorporated into the bikers options, they can still ride trad bridleways, get maps out and hit the mountains but if conditions are crap they can choose to hit a nearby trail centre for a fix of riding.

The parallels are obvious and I think its mostly a storm in a tea cup for climbing.  Indoor walls will provide a nearby climbing fix, traditionalists will still do what they do outdoors but also have more choices to go indoors if they want.  These walls will encourage climbing and a few will venture out doors with their skills and then relearn them on real rock.  Wether the walls are sculpted unmarked walls or colour coded blobs walls wont really make much difference.  Colour coding blobs take away one element of the unknown for new climbers, they look at the coloured holds and know where they should go.  Its all still just climbing and all should be encouraged.

[webbo]

I too have been thinking about this. I belive there is probably a big difference in the  customer depending where the wall is.
So this will tend to effect the climbing surfaces/setting.
At Rockcity in Hull there are too few climbers to sustain the wall as a business so they have to encourage non climbers to climb.
They have featured bouldering, featured trad leading walls and featured top roping. The featured boudering gets used a fair bit because its a large cave/roof on jugs,  the leading abit and the top roping a lot but none of it gets as much use as the new bouldering area with the circuits. However the 90's style overhanging lead wall rarely gets used except by one or 2 diehards training for their winter trip to Kalyiminos.
So in order get more customers and keep the business going out its coming.
I suspect most wall owners who generally are climbers have to think like this

[tomtom]

Ach you've got me started Webbo
theres too few folks at Rock city, because its not very good!  Sure it's much better than it was, but it's miles behind the other bouldering walls in the UK.

Sandtex / textured walls and in built features are fine for low grade shizzle, but for harder things they mean that route setters tend to rely on smearing on flat walls or tiny features for feet, so Often the problems can get a similar feel over time. On smooth untextured ply walls setters have to give small foot screw/bolt ons meaning there is more flexibility in the setting. It really winds me up at Rock city how all the v5 or above problems seem to rely on you having to smear on a bit of shitty sandtex painted ply - which is both unpleasant and quite different from climbing on real rock.

Sorry! Rant over