Why Has Everyone SUDDENLY Started Rock Climbing Indoors¿

Climbing has boomed over the last decade. Four sports will be making their Olympic debuts at the Tokyo Games. Karate, skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing. Free solo. Like mommy's little monkey. In the last sort of four or five years it's just grown and grown in popularity. The trend has been huge. I've climbed three disciplines. I've never been done before. Where do I climb? I mean I've always climbed because I'm not good at anything else. In the UK the average number of indoor rock climbing visits has grown by almost 60% in the past four years. Climbing is changing. We're going from a sport that was very niche into this thing where there's big corporations involved. There's money coming into it. Rock climbing is finally cool. Whereas climbing has historically been perceived as a fringe alternative sport, attracting only dirtbag society cynical folk with a passion for rocks alone, it's now hitting the mainstream. With Louis Vuitton short bags retailing for $1,600, the North Face teaming up with Kim Kardashian's Skims and Gucci to debut new Gork Core inspired collections, there's little doubt that we're watching climbing make the big time. But like Airbnb or Pickleball, will climbing be ruined by its own popularity? Or does its rise reveal a fundamental role for climbing in our cultural history? For its power to reconnect us to natural movement, self-improvement and community. This month I set out to explore the climbing boom, speaking to some of climbing's newest converts and oldest devotees with a question in mind. How has a niche counterculture sport evolved into a steadfast hobby for millions? And why are we all so hooked? When I first stepped into an indoor climbing gym over a decade ago, climbing was seen quite differently and it looked really different too. As Jimmy Chin quipped in a recent article for GQ magazine, climbing was usually for the misfits that didn't belong, either in mainstream sports or in society. And even in the time that I've been climbing, climbing's undergone a step change. The spaces available to climb in have changed and with them attitudes have shifted towards what climbing is exactly. And who climbing's for. 40 years ago you'd likely have to live close by to the mountains to partake in climbing and you might have needed a litany of expensive gear and an affinity for type 2 fun. But the acceleration of climbing's popularity has kickstarted a wave of bigger, newer, more modern and inviting facilities. According to the Climbing Business Journal, at the end of last year a total of 622 climbing gyms were open in the US, compared to 353 gyms a decade before. A 76% increase in 10 years. But surely it's not just convenience that's driving the wave. Climbing as a lifestyle has gained visibility on a global stage. Many cite specific moments for climbing's newfound attention. I think they've either seen it in the Olympics and come down and given it a go. There's a lot more commercial centres now so it's become a lot more available to people. Hollywood blockbusters including Free Solo and The Dorm Wall, the advent of the social media age, the rise of climbing YouTube channels and online forums and a shifting, more consumer-led climbing media generally. So how about your YouTube channel, how's that going? Online engagement with climbing-related searches grew by 69% from January 2014 to January 2015, thanks to Dorm Wall Mania fan digital marketer Adam Stack. And then of course climbing's debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and then subsequently at the Paris 2024 Olympics put competitive climbing, an arguably more energetic, engaging and marketable subsection of climbing, on the map for a global audience. Whilst it seems certain that climbing's relevance and popularity is down to a whole host of factors, I'm convinced that it's more than just climbing's refined image that's influencing climbing's uptake because it's more than just climbing's image that's changing. It's what, perhaps more importantly, climbing can give us and the human needs that it can satisfy in postmodern society. We spoke to philosopher and climber Kimber Moore to ask how significant these changes were in climbing's story. I wouldn't say that climbing is losing its identity so much as that identity is changing, which has always been the case. In the US you had the dirtbag aesthetic of the 70s, the machismo of the 90s and then now I'm not sure how to describe it but it's different for sure. I wanted to talk to someone who'd never tried climbing and try to pinpoint exactly what modern climbing offered to new audiences. When I learned that mutual friend Jen was keen to try climbing for the first time, it seemed the perfect opportunity to find out how indoor climbing is perceived by newcomers and is meeting or subverting the expectations of those people who might be next in line for a monthly membership. Hi, I'm Jen and I've never climbed before but I'm here with Hannah today for my first ever climb. We took Jen to our local The Climbing Hangar in Reading for her to see what all the fuss was about. When you're coming back down, use any of the holds around you, you don't have to stick to the colour you went up. And I'd be interested to know before we get started, if you have any preconceptions going in, what are you expecting climbing to be? I think my biggest expectations are that I'm going to struggle with my upper body strength and I'm a little bit scared of the fear of falling and the heights. Can you edit out my little streaks please? I also feel, because most people I know who climb are usually not women, so I guess I feel like it's, I've kind of felt like it's not for me before. So you've got your shoes, they're feeling fine? Feel good. We also have chalk bags, so what chalk is for is it will basically help with if your hands are getting a bit sweaty on the wall. So if you're starting here and then you kind of move up as high as you want to go, okay? You don't need to go up to the top. I think it's better to kind of give yourself that permission to work your way up to things. Would you like a go? Yep, let's do it. Jen's perceptions of what climbing is and who climbing is for are not uncommon. Avoiding fear and machismo are barriers that have kept many people away. Is it bad if you put both feet on one? No. Okay. There we go, you're at the top. Some of the things that we hear people say quite frequently are things like, I'm afraid of heights. And then we did the first bump. First climb, well done. Really nice. Yeah. How do you feel? Yeah, good. Yeah? Yeah. I think for a lot of people, they're worried that they don't look like a climber. If you actually walk into a climbing centre, point out to me who looks like a climber. It's anyone that's on the wall with shoes. Walking through the climbing hangar alongside Jen was a nice change of perspective to think how climbing might appear today to a new visitor. It's generally colourful, inviting and playful. A commercial leisure facility with well-designed spaces to meet friends, drink artisan coffee, and it caters to all ability levels. While still providing enough thrill to deliver a dopamine boost. Really, really good. Right, that's the size I'm going. That's all right. Nicely done. How are your hands feeling? I haven't tried this yet. I think I could probably give that a go. It's quite high, but I could try it. Yeah. It doesn't look too hard. Yeah, come on. You've got a foot just below that grey volume, which you might not be able to see super well. Oh, yeah. On the right-hand side. This one? No, so it's like... Higher, a tiny bit higher, a tiny bit higher. Yeah. Nice. I definitely see why planning the route is good, because I wouldn't have seen that. Yeah, sometimes you like climb past a point where, when you look down, all you can see is like the holes beneath you. You don't know where the feet have gone. It's so funny when you're concentrating and you think you're somewhere else than you actually are. It's like, oh, and then you look and you're like, oh, the floor's there. Yeah. And in the time I've spent in indoor bouldering environments, I think indoor climbing has slowly been finding its own identity. An identity which, crucially, is no longer anchored to outdoor rock climbing. You've got a foot out to the left. I can't do it. Does that feel stabilising? Yeah. Indoor climbing doesn't need outdoor climbing to exist any more than swimming in your local swimming pool needs the sea, says Jed MacDonoghill, director of the Climbing Hunger bouldering chain. Now seen by many as an alternative to the gym, indoor climbing centres now more directly rival yoga classes and boot camp workouts than a day on Stannage Edge. Bouldering is becoming its own indoor sport and we're doing things indoor that you wouldn't even think of doing outdoor that are just not possible outdoor. Indoor rock climbing is a quietly expanding exercise industry ripe for a CrossFit-like explosion, claimed Bloomberg in 2015. And its ability to exercise our mental capacity at the same time is no doubt part of its appeal. I've often found that the sharp focus that problem-solving a new route can bring blends testing yourself physically and mentally, as well as bringing a refuge from the distractions and stresses of our increasingly frantic world. But perhaps even more importantly to climbing's rise, it's the way the activity offers a platform for communities to build on. People are increasingly using indoor climbing walls as social spaces. I think one of the main things that really helps people is the sense of community. Climbing, I don't know why, but it has that kind of group to it. 40 years ago, the small demographic that climbing did reach meant that climbing was in itself a community to join. So few people climbed that being a climber meant that you were part of a somewhat exclusive club. Maybe in retrospect, this gave climbing a somewhat insular feel. It filtered the climbing experience and maybe even contributed to a certain amount of gatekeeping around the sport. It meant something to be a climber and climbers themselves felt that they had ownership over who could and couldn't be a climber. When I met the climbing hunger boss Jed MacDonoghill in Edinburgh earlier this year, he was eager to point out the flaws in lawmaking around activities like climbing. Right, if I was a non-climber, whatever that is, right, somebody who just hasn't climbed yet, how many times do you have to climb before you're a climber? You know, and like there's big cultural gaps in that, like in the US, which is a sweeping generalisation, you'll meet people who've been climbing for a week and like, dude, I'm a climber, you know, like, and I know 10 years in climbers than you can. I'm like, oh, I don't really climb, I'm not really a proper climber because they've set up some arbitrary definition of what a climber is and they don't fit it. Over the last couple of decades, I think that climbing has more successfully started to acknowledge the different things that it can be for different people. Then when you get into the community here, you've got all sorts of people, like mums, dads, like, you know, climbing with their kids, kids climbing without their parents, you know, and everybody using this for different reasons, like people for whom the climbing experience, this bit is an organising principle that the people they meet, the attitudes, the social component, that's the reason. And I would take the view of like, well, is it for me to take a view on that? You know, like if they're having a great time and they're using us as the platform to be happy and to connect with others, then I think we're doing the right job. And I think for me, climbing has always been the vehicle, not the point. And I think when climbing becomes the point, that then seems to foster kind of that thinking where you create worthy, not worthy, you cut things up in an arbitrary definition. And I don't think, like, certainly from when I'm thinking about what we do, you know, the Hangar Squad and, say, Space, which is like one of the social groups, or Hangar Women Rock, these things are all their own community. And within those communities, there are sub-communities within it. And I think our job is to be the platform that those communities stand on, that the hangar should never be the core of that thing, because we are not those people. We're the facilitator in that sense. And I think maybe I'm overly academic about it, but I mean, I think facilitation is our job. Nice, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the end of our session together, Jen's reflections gave strong vindication of climbing's appeal. Is it something that you can see yourself doing again? Now you've tried it. Yeah, I think so. Part of me would want to go on my own so that I could just, like, get better without maybe people watching. But there's also part of me that would, I think I'd need the motivation and, like, the social side of it and to have someone spotting or moral support while you're going up and maybe a little bit worried. So I would go again. I want to be able to finish some of the climbs that I can do today. And it's like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. And I guess it's like, it depends on what it is that draws you to climbing. Like a lot of people climb for the social side of climbing. For a lot of people, climbing is like a replacement for the gym or like a good workout. And for a lot of people, it's kind of like a combination of both. Depends how you feel on the day. But I'm glad to hear that we haven't put you off climbing forever and that you did enjoy it. Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, I hope you continue to enjoy it. Jen, like many others, may be drawn back for a sense of connection and community or the pursuit of physical and mental wellness. But realistically, many modern day pastimes offer these things. Climbing has had to fight for regard against local running clubs, five-a-side football leagues, paddle and pickleball after all. But a higher uptake for social sports across the board is perhaps telling of a more general social shift towards connectedness. In a comprehensive study earlier this year, researchers analysed how different groups of climbers access climbing for different motivations. So things like community, the pursuit of higher grades, better performance, the pursuit of adventure. But what was most interesting for me was the identity aspects at play. The study helps us to understand how climbing is often seen as a lifestyle choice and an important part of how people view themselves and the world around them. In a cross-section of today's climbing population, researchers found the most common type of climber is the social climber. They make up nearly a quarter of respondents. These people are mostly bolder and nearly 85% of them started climbing in the last three years. In their responses, they signalled that personal expression and identity was at the top of their list of desires to climb alongside community. What I found especially interesting is that in vastly different groups of climbers, for example, those who mostly rope climb, tend to be slightly older and have climbed for longer, we see the same motivation to climb as a form of self-expression and identity, as a cornerstone of their day-to-day life. So to what extent might we suggest that people are gravitating towards a sport that offers us a place to call home and brand ourselves with a touch of subculture intent in an age of individualism? As Delaney Miller from climbing.com captures perfectly in her article, How Indoor Climbing Became a Boondoggle, it's no wonder we arrived here when you acknowledge that our sport, built by youthful outcasts and rebels, has continued to represent a reckoning with society and boy have we done some reckoning in the last 10 years or so. In a society that's more diverse than it's ever been, cultural focus has aimed steady at mass acceptance and unity amidst raging divisiveness and economic and social turmoil. We've seen concepts like gender continue to be post-modernised, we've seen a rise in grassroots activism from Occupy Wall Street to Me Too to Black Lives Matter. The whole fervour is craving for something new, urban and accessible to all. Climbing has always been progressive as a sport but now it's intentionally so. In this zeitgeist, the sport has become cool and that's all to say that it fits the vibes of the times. In this sense, it's not only the ways in which climbing has evolved from its earliest days that have endeared it to new audiences but a delicate balancing act where its value also lies in its historical roots. Because of its historical roots, climbing remains a statement of counterculture intent and a break from conformity that places like Planet Fitness represent. Whereas many sports offer community and wellness, what climbing does differently is offer those things with a generous helping of counterculture. Think fan life, rejection of conformity, seeking outdoors or at least a return to nature if only in simulation. As humans, we rely on a sense of belonging for our well-being yet in many ways, we're living in an increasingly fractured and disconnected environment where individualism has won over collectivism. Another quote from Delaney's article, as capitalism churns on, we the people who can buy $100 t-shirts or scratch that $1,000 handbags or try this one rare coffee made from cat poop, we're drowning in it and by it I mean consumerism. Climbing, this thing that for so many of us represents something autistic and spiritual, has become far more monetizable than it used to be. Whereas a really critical view might see the boom in climbing as a capitalist manipulation of a fundamentally counterculture activity, I think I prefer to see the evolution in the popularity of climbing as the sport finding its place in a world where people crave connection and belonging and human movement. Caroline McCloskey wrote in GQ, unlike its dirtbag forebears or the aura surrounding other sporty subcultures, skating's legacy of punk defiance, the existential poetry of surfing, climbing's new wave isn't especially affiliated with cool. If cool is about casual detachment, climbing is about literal and figurative attachment, a concerted state of mental and physical engagement that requires nerd levels of exactitude. In climbing you try and you care. With its work ethic and goal setting and mathy language like beta, problem, projecting, redpoint, and unembarrassed communal enthusiasm, the modern climbing gym is almost ruthlessly wholesome, more like a church than a bar. After all, climbing is starting to change its form. It's shedding a distinct sense of machoism, although not without a palpable sense of tension between habits old and new. Of course, while cultural shifts have shaped the way people look to engage with climbers, it is, in turn, the ability of the sport to respond that has helped climbing to reach new heights. Indoor bouldering, for example, hasn't always looked as thought through as the experience we walked Jen through. When the first indoor facilities opened, places like Leeds University Climbing Wall in 1968 and Mile End Climbing Wall in 1986, moulded shapes and plastic holds were first used to imitate the style of natural rock formations from man-made routes or problems. They were notably more one-dimensional facilities, at their hearts, a place for outdoor adventure seekers looking to hone their skills. These walls, with their less polished construction and sometimes unforgiving emphasis on hardcore training, have now largely been expanded to offer services that different audiences desire. In a demonstration of the way our climbing spaces have been able to nurture change and increase participation as new interest has risen, places like The Climbing Hangar have invested in gamified climbing circuits and a focus on customer service to rival any modern hospitality venue. One example of The Climbing Hangar's approach to new climbers is their Magic Moves circuit, a series of climbs specifically designed to introduce fundamental movements and each complete with a video demonstration of the technique. For this one in particular, you wouldn't really need the QR code, but for other ones, and I can show a few of them to you later, it brings up a video that shows you somebody doing the route. So if the words themselves don't make sense because often trying to describe something physical, yeah, makes it easier to see someone doing it. Oh, god. Nice. Is that it? Really good, yeah. That was nice. Can you edit out my little streaks, please? Oh, we're coming down harder. Yeah. Do you want to stick with the animals or shall we branch out to the rest of the sunshine? Yeah, let's branch out. Yeah, I'm a bit, yeah. So good. I can't do it. This is quite hard. Oh, you can't do it, but you basically did do it. You had one hand on the top. As soon as I get there, it's not even that high looking at it from here, but it's the feeling, I think, of your legs getting up above there. Yeah. But it would definitely be one I'd want to keep going back because I don't think I'm far off. In the UK, the Climbing Hangar is leading the way in curating enjoyable and accessible experiences for people new to climbing. They've created a collection of my favourite climbing spaces nationwide and I've teamed up with them to provide a half-price entry for new visitors, simply by using the code HANNAH50 when you schedule a visit on their website. Ooh. Yep. There we go, nice. Really good. Whereas plastic pulling was once a derogatory term for an inferior brand of climbing, it's now both a more popular and respected version of the sport than outdoor rock climbing. Research by the Association of British Walls has shown that over 100,000 people regularly climb in the United Kingdom. But in a departure from past eras of these frequent climbers, almost three quarters only climb indoors. Whatever the reasons are for climbing's rise and whichever flavour of intellectualising it we're enjoying in the moment and wherever it's headed in the future, I know for sure that it's going to be really interesting to follow climbing's trajectory over the next couple of decades. Personally, I feel like indoor climbing has become a fun and largely more accessible alternative to the gym with a really cool origin story and this kind of counterculture, almost iconoclastic identity to boot. I think in a world where people rarely truly connect to their bodies and their minds and even less frequently see the two as connected to this greater ecosystem of wellbeing and humanity, I feel like climbing really can be a return to ourselves. As Alex Honnold noted in GQ, the primitive impulse might partly explain the frenzy. Since along with running and swimming, climbing has been a basic way the human animal has negotiated its environment for millennia. And Daniel Duane of the New York Times wrote almost a decade ago on the rise of climbing, rock climbing, thanks in large part to the modern climbing gym, has suddenly started up the human performance curve towards athletic maturity. Every other fundamental human movement pattern developed long ago into a mature sport, so maybe it was just a matter of time. For one reason or another, or all of them in synchronisation, we're witnessing a massive boom in climbing's popularity and visibility in the socio-cultural imagination. Climbers now might not identify as climbers to the bone, but simply people who climb. But now with brands like Delta and Coca-Cola and Head & Shoulders looking to reach a new wave of people who are outdoorsy inspired but may not care so much for climbing outside at the crag, people feel like climbing's roots are being compromised. As for what that threat looks like exactly and whether or not climbing will be ruined by its own popularity, that is a question for a whole other video.