Most expensive VS cheapest boulder in the climbing gym

We're running a bit of an experiment on what kind of a boulder you can create with a £50 budget versus a £5,000 budget. This is George. George, would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us a bit about George Ronsdale. My name is George. I'm the head setter for the Climbing Hangar Matchworks and the Climbing Hangar Sandhills in Liverpool. I've been climbing for something like 15 years and setting for five. In that time I've set all around the country at lots of different climbing hangars. So today we are at Matchworks in Liverpool and we've roped George in for a bit of a route setting challenge. My hypothesis is that I reckon I can create a good boulder with whatever. With both? Okay. Maybe something a bit more showy with the more expensive one. Yeah, I think that's the one I'm most excited for. So yeah, they're all the same brand. These are all Squadra Fitchels, varying in which ones they are and how much they cost. Because we're setting the expensive one, I feel like we should also do something that's quite showy, a bit of a showpiece block. And the pink circuit's our World Cup circuit. I was going to say, I recognise a lot of these holds from the Hangar Sheffield and the pink World Cup circuit. Which typically, as you'd expect from a World Cup circuit, is a lot of throwing yourself around and slapping around for things. Right, so let's see if we can do something like that. If we stick that one down here, straight away that's a good platform. This one, what's this one? Fitchel number five. Which is a good hold, but it's not good enough, it's not like a really in-cut jug. Somewhere like there, and making a move up to that, but not being able to stop on it and having to paddle through. So something that's a little bit better and then you could stop on that. Both the boulders that we have to set have to be something that you would sign off for public consumption. They can't just be sticking the most expensive holds on the wall and calling it the most expensive hold. They have to be commercially viable because we are leaving them on the wall afterwards. It'll be real fine. Yeah, we're going to leave it up for the customers and this will only get reset next time we reset this zone. Okay, it's got to be good then. So it's got to be good, yeah, that's the challenge. George said that each hold was like £300 GBP. We're nearly at a grand. We need a move into that. We might have to do the cardinal sin that I already said I don't like doing. Mix up the holds. Yeah, we call it goulash in here. Two jugs there. Hit this one. Stop on something down there, let's put that on. That one, the wrong way round, might just be good enough. And if it's not, that one could be. Good work, I can kind of see that. It might be a little bit high, maybe we need to move it down a bit, but that's fine, it's on the wall. We're kind of building like a skeleton of it. Nice, right, so let's stick the bad foot on first. So that one's going to go, it's actually going to turn this one into a three. Ribs or something. Yeah, I can see that, like on a fish. Yeah. Yeah, like you've drawn like a skeleton fish out. And then the last move, we want to go and have like a big committing move over onto this. So we'll stick that on. For starting holds, we obviously don't want it to be super, super hard, but we also want the move to be forced. Something like the X-Cult horns, they're a little bit dusty, could be really good. But on that steep angle, they might be quite difficult to hold. But I think that's a good one to try. Like this. Oh my gosh, that one's rubbish. Like that kind of thing. That didn't look a million miles away in your trainers. See, something like that. That was so sick. I think this could work and just need like really, really tiny tweaks now. Would you say that is kind of like, not quite final form, but pretty much like the... Yeah, 100%. Like the climb is there, the moves are like working-ish. They all need like very, very minor tweaks, like a little bit like fine tuning just to get it right. I think we are looking at like yellow grade for the hangar. Yeah. So what's that, like one, two, three, four, five, like six level that we have? But before we try the boulder, we're going to head around now to our vertical beater board. And George is going to set a boulder with less budget. So now we've got a £50 budget. And George is going to see what creation he can whip up from that board. Say goodbye to big macros. The hold store. If we are looking at holds that are less expensive, we forget about the big stuff. And we need to start looking at some smaller holds. There's a few different things for us to look at. So we're looking at blues. Blues are like one of the easiest circuits for us. So we don't want to go too ratty because something like that, I mean, barely even a hold, something like that on a slab is going to feel really, really small. So we want to go a little bit more generous than that. Something like those, these core, I think they're actually called footholds from core, but they're really, really comfortable in cut crimps if they're that way up. Or like quite flat edges, which on the angle that we're looking at, maybe a flat edge might be better than an incut one. You will have to kind of still move around a little bit. I guess they make quite good feet too. Yeah, right. So you can even like recycle them. How do we feel about volumes? I feel great about volumes. Oh, how much are these ones? Screw-ons 20mm, screw-ons 30mm. We're talking about £40 for a set of those. And there's 16 in a set. So that's still within budget though, isn't it? This is actually a good shopping basket. So £20 plus another £12. So that's 32. You've still got some to play with. That's the budget. This is it. This is the paint. Volumes are always an added expense, right? But they do form part of the wall, which means that no matter what colour climb you're on, you can use the volumes. Is it a get-out-of-jail-free card to say that if we put these on, we can also set a cool boulder later on more expensive holds and then the volumes are there for that one? Well, that's the thing. You have to like divide the cost of the volume by the amount of climbs that are on. Whoa, this is some complex maths. At the minute, there's no climbs on the wall, so... What I'm hoping is that that shouldn't... It's like you're still smeary, but not too smeary that a blue climber, which we have to remember is like someone who's still relatively new to climbing, isn't going to be too sketched out by that. And if they are, then maybe we add something on it to bring that risk level back down a little bit. I'm just going to throw these on and see if we can make something that looks cool. Does that look cool? Fairly cool, I'll take that. What I'm quite conscious of as well is the angles are really good on this side, but because it's quite flat on this side, I don't want it to be vertical because then that's a really good foothold for someone. The volumes have kind of dictated somewhat the direction of the climb, right? So if we start underneath, we move into this volume, have a transition, turn around, move up this way, we're done, we're at the top of the wall. So I'm going to use these footholds because we've got the pockets that will make really good hands. Step up onto the next one. These ones have an in-cut side and a flat side. Because we're on a slab, if you're in soft higher shoes, in-cut side sometimes feels a little bit stabby. I think straight away I feel like I want a foot down there just like when I'm pulling on. And maybe we could get another pocket in one of the bolt holes on the volume to make our first move. And then we're going to walk up the feet this way. It'd be cool to try and do it with as little hands as possible because we're on a slab, so we can try and get people to balance a little bit. And then we'll have them transition that way. I didn't think it was that kind of YouTube channel. Good question. There's the risk factor. Just feel risky. Cool. So the climb works, but it didn't look... It certainly didn't look perfect, but I think it's not far off and just needs a few fine-tuning tweaks. So the first move, you kept your foot on the foothold when you reached for it. Yeah. Rather than standing up. So what I want to do is make sure that everyone can keep their foot on that foothold. So I think it just needs to come up higher again so that when you stand up into it, rather than having to pop over for it, you can be like this. So it's a little bit higher. Do you know what I mean? You're standing a little bit higher already, so your hips are higher straight away. Yeah, I think that was a good tweak. Yeah. Play around with it. I think the toe-up could work. We could try moving the foot up. Or even give you something like this to bounce your foot up into. Yeah. If it wouldn't be helpful from the start. Yeah, right, and not good enough that you would be able to release on it. Yeah. You see having your foot higher definitely changed that move, didn't it? Yeah, it is, for sure. Yeah, it does. I think there's two things. I'm trying to test two different moves at once, I think. Let's swap out the horn for the really good ankle pocket. So the evolution is the hands, the horn hands were not good enough to be able to generate the right amount of momentum in the direction that we wanted to go at the level that we wanted to do it. So we've tweaked it. We've used a slightly less cool hold, don't get me wrong, which may take down the overall price of the boulder a little bit. We didn't consider that, but it's made the climb better. As we keep saying, these are staying up, so the climbs have to be both really good, expensive, but also still has to be right. We put that on as an undercut. Like this one, because of the scoop on it, you end up nestling your fingers in. This is very much a personal preference, but it feels a bit like you cam into it, it's not the comfiest. So I think I'm going to swap it for one of these lapis jugs, because it's open on the side, but you can still curve your fingers in to hold that first smooth, and then place the toe in. And I'll do the same for this one. So we've got a nice symmetrical pair. And I think we could be on. That was exactly it. The question is, could you have done that break that you just found? I don't know if Nathan caught it or not, but when you hit this, you just stepped through half an hour now of trying these moves and doing loads of little fine tuning tweaks. We found like a the be-all and end-all break. Yeah, kind of escaped on notice. Like you said, I think we got a bit tunnel-visioned and didn't realise that actually there was a workaround move. For us to make that impossible, we're cranking up intensity, complexity and risk so much because we have to move so much faster, the body positions are harder to be in and we have to pull a lot more. Suddenly our mid-range comp motor has gone straight up to the top of the grade board. So we need a complete change of concept for this move. We're starting again. Not completely. So we're going to lose this and instead of having that foot plant as our stop position for the momentum through the move, we're going to spin this one, make it a shoulder, very ever so slightly turn that one back so that we can make our move into it, put our toe hook in and match and then release the toe and swing out into a double shoulder and then what we'll do is probably match, put a foot up into the scoop and then we should be back where we started back into the top section. Happy with that? I am happy with that. Right, let's give it a go. Go on, so jump into the shoulder. Nice, yes, well done. Okay, cool. So, we just need to make sure that that is forced now, so I think if we drop the foot so that when you move into this your feet are a little bit lower, so you still have to pop into this a bit more that would be sick. If we keep the toe hook, you might still be able to static up to it and then release and that would be even better because it's the same move but a little bit easier. Your shoulder's going now. That will go after a bit more. Nice, cool. It's not too bad now. So you can kind of put your toe in bounce up Oh, that's nicer than it was because you've got that low foot. Is that closer to? That's much nicer as the difficulty level we were going for originally. Oh, what about if you bump your right foot up onto this? Are you ready? One, two, three and then it's on you. Release the toe and swing or bounce the foot up up to you. Swing Yeah, go on Nice! That was well good. Nice one. Okay It didn't feel as good as last time. The catch, yeah. It isn't too bunched. Come on, Nate. Nice. Come on, Nate. Nice, dude. You might be able to get a bit more reach with your right, potentially. Come on. Yeah, come on. That's it. Yes, Hannah, come on. Toe on. My shoulders! It's alright. It's only really shouldery all the way to the top now. Go on, really weight that left toe. Push into it. Woah! What do they say about a weighted foot? Yeah, I had a bit of an unfortunate foot flip on my last attempt but I think that I've realised now that I need to bring my right hand in, I think I panicked a little. And I also now know that I'm right hand gang on going up to the first shoulder one. I'm going to stick with that because that worked. Uh oh. Nice, come on. Pull and go. Nice. That's it. Look for the foot. Oh, you didn't need it. Come on. That's it, come on. Shuffle your hands up. Come on, Maurice, focus. Smooth. Stay on the right foot and then drop it once you've maxed. That's it, come on. Really, really push into your feet. That was really close. That's progress. So, I've got two boulders on the wall. One at kind of like intermediate into I don't know, yeah, what would you say this grade was? I would say this is like a little bit more than intermediate not quite expert level. Like we're in the top half of the grade board without a doubt. But I think it's one that is quite accessible for most people. If they're operating like if they're in hangars and they're operating like red level I think this could be one that's someone that could have a good go at. And then the other one is a super commercial blue climb, which is obviously much easier. I think which one wins the competition? I don't know, it's hard to compare them, isn't it? So I think I enjoy both of them. But I think this one picks it for me just because the dynamic movement involved is really fun. And I really like the toe hook too. Yeah, I mean it works perfectly, right? This boulder is obviously like it's really cool. The movement's amazing, the holds are obviously sick. So from a personal climbing perspective I would pick this one. But my headset ahead tells me to think about what is more commercial. The blue is like spot on the right difficulty. It doesn't take up too much space on the wall. Which from like a business point of view if you have something that doesn't take up too much space you get more climbs in, which is a good thing. So maybe that wins for how commercial a boulder problem is. I think we set out at the beginning, didn't we? To create a show for you to paint. That was kind of like really fun to climb, but also very fun to watch. Yeah, exactly. And I think that is this. Whereas the blue is very fun to climb, maybe not as fun to watch, not as dramatic constantly. But it's the kind of climb that when someone gets on it who has never done a blue before they're going to get when they look at that high foothold on the volume, they're going to get a bit of anxiety about it and be like, oh my gosh that's the next move, how am I going to do that? And it's going to create some different feelings than a different, maybe a more juggy blue might do. So it's still performing like the function of being a really good boulder perfectly, I think. It's just not quite as flashy as this one. And I think that's maybe what's pimped it for both of us. Yeah, I think so. So I'll leave links to all of George's social media in the description of this video. He has a route setting page so you can go and check out all the other boulders that he has set. And thank you very much to The Climbing Hunger at Matchworks this time around for letting us come in and set. So, thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.