Momentum Indoor Climbing Sofia — Attraction in Sofia City

Climbing needs gravity, something a spaceship doesn't have.

See, this place tries to be modern and I won't lie, the exterior is impressive. In fact, the moment you walk in, you're in awe of this place. The guy at the front desk was also incredibly friendly and tremendously helpful.

Now on to he climbing part. So, the entire gym is powered by these illuminated holds. So every route you want to climb, be it top rope or boulder, you'll first have to select it in the app. Let's talk about the app. It's awful. It really is. I ran it on a flagship phone but it's the synchronisation or something that's taking too long. You'll be waiting over 10 seconds just to see the available routes. Once you're there and you find what you want to climb, you'll have to actually find it in real life, turning the lights on and off. Another issue I have with these holds is that it seems to be pointsless. From what I can see this light based gimmic doesn't actually provide a larger selection of routes. The holds could have been painted and it would have done the job just as well. In fact, in my opinion, browsing boulder problems while being able to see them is much better. But yeah, if these lights actually helped with anything, I'd be completely down, but they simply don't.

The routes themselves were okay. Nothing amazing but not bad either. I will say though the level is quite high. If you can't climb 6B, you'll have a hard time actually finding anything to climb at all and what you will find, won't be all that interesting. You also need to be skilled at overhang, if you prefer flatter walls, you won't really find that here. Lastly, I'll mention the automatic pulley system... it work great, nothing bad to say about it. It works well, actually adds to the experience and allows you to climb top rope alone. Some walls are manually secured though, not all are automatic.

I don't know how the rental gear is nor did I go to the cafe.

In conclusion, I can't really recommend this place. As a gym, it's not all that great, the experience definitely isn't. What's worse, this is really expensive. Ten euros for one session is more that you'll pay at some gyms in West Europe. For Bulgaria's standards, that's...

Okay so this is definitely THE place for indoor sports climbing in Sofia. There are no downsides, apart from maybe the fact that you are not allowed to walk around barefoot, which if you're used to and don't have flip flops or whatever might be a minor issue, but long term is a for the better of everyone. Other than that, I don't know where to begin since everything about the place is amazing.

Before you even begin your climbing session you will notice the changing rooms that are spacious and have a very modern feel to them. They also have lockers (with actual keys, that actually lock! 🔐) , so you don't have to worry about your valuables at all. Furthermore if you want to properly warm up there is a separate training room with all sorts of bars, handles, balls, dumbbells etc. There is even a treadmill 🏃.

Now to the main climbing facility. Before you even put your climbing seat on MAKE SURE YOU CONNECT TO THE WI-FI (there are instructions on the very entrance of the main atrium, or you can simply ask the kind staff) Why is that so important? Once you're on their network you can access the CLIMBING ROUTES map and interact with it. What does that mean? It means that not only can you see the name and level of difficulty of every route in the whole gym, but you can also highlight them, which literally lights up the holds of a specific route in a specific colour, making your climbing experience so much better!

Furthermore there are so many routes, which due to the aforementioned highlighting can be changed so easily, that it's very hard to climb every one of them. There are boulder routes, angled routes, easy routes, impossible routes. Definitely something for every skill level.

Finally there are a lot of AUTO BELAYS. Admittedly they are concentrated along the somewhat easier routes (up to 6A or so), but are nonetheless great if you don't have a climbing buddy yet.

There are more things I can mention here, like the fact that you can play whatever music you like, that the staff is kind, the showers are nice and functional, but all in all this place is 100% a must if you're in Sofia and into sports...

Difficult to find routes as they are not physically labeled. To find a route you have to be stuck on your phone to go online and toggle the LED lights of the route and only then try and discover the your route's color within the building. You do this by going to an ambiguous IP address on the local Wifi network, which of course you cannot find any of without assistance from the only front desk personnel which are expectedly busy with walk-ins and are naturally not versed in IT. The entire phone-control makes the experience quite antisocial. The routes themselves are extremely beginner unfriendly only starting from 5a which is 3 levels higher in difficulty from other gyms I've seen. The route nodes don't vary in shape too much, are unkept, entirely covered by old chalk, and different route nodes are so close to each other it's difficult to not bump into them during a climb. My experience is related to the bouldering part, not the assisted rock climbing part. The registration process is extremely tedious and intrusive requiring a form registration input with tons of personal data requiring even an email for the simplest 1-time only training even. The entire check-in takes at least 5 minutes and there is usually queues of people. This makes it very inconvenient place to bring a friend or a coworker for a social workout. The costs we paid for single training are matching costs I've paid in Netherlands, but the multi-month subscription prices are outrageously high being several times what I've seen in much much better gyms. I'm personally left with the opinion that this is an uncared for gym with no passion for the sport/hobby by the business owners and is treated as a cash grab. I will not be doing...