True North Climbing — Attraction in Toronto

To put it briefly, the facility is very good, the staff aren't cutting it, and the clientele is a nightmare.

The facility is quite spacious and able to provide a large amount of varied routes of all levels of difficulty. The routes are well set and utilize fun movements and interesting holds. A few of the walls are long enough to require a bit more endurance which is nice. The entire climbing area is covered in padded flooring so you can be sure you wont "Miss the mat" doing a boulder problem. Parking is never an issue and the facility is kept at a comfortable temperature in summer or winter.

The staff are apathetic. I witnessed an employee examining a couple who hadn't been climbing in a long time and wanted to re-obtain their belay licence. After watching them be unable to properly tie a figure 8 or keep the break hand on he still gave them a temporary pass. You regularly see customers screwing around like the gym is a bouncy castle but the staff are reluctant to keep any semblance of peace. You can tell they just want to make it through their day without any added stress.

The clientele you will encounter at True North makes you consistently amazed they are still alive. Belay technique is horrendous, a combination of loose to non existent brake hand. Because your average belayer is so awful you see a lot of bad habits to try and compensate. Belayers will regularly stand 10 feet back from the wall so they don't have to crane their neck to see their climber. Because of this you will have sections of the gym that you can't walk through unless you want to walk directly under a climber. This of course doesn't deter the average climber at True North who may not even realize there is someone above them.

Gri-gri use is mandatory which I feel is treating a symptom and not the disease. I was taught how to top and lead belay with a tube style device. At no point did I feel it was dangerous. I understood that only through proper technique would I be able to catch falls but I was taught and practiced that proper technique. True North has to make use of a number of crutches because they aren't being adequate stewards of climbing safety and ethics. By no means am I an old school trad climbing hard man. I learned to climb in a gym and think gyms are great. However, True North is doing the climbing community zero favours by catering to and enabling so many dangerous and...

I was really dissapointed with this gym. The gym layout was quite impractical. The climbs themselves defied the limits of comprehension. The climbing routes, intricately intertwined like a puzzle missing crucial pieces, left us perplexed and confused about where each climb began or ended. Nevermind the confusing grading system. One colour represents three possible grades which also complicates the experience.

But that's not all; the gym's internal organization was equally intriguing. The staff, with their not-so-subtle indifference to their responsibilities, seemed like they didn’t want to be here and didn’t want us there either. One employee decided that my project that I was working on, wherein I already started climbing was the ideal location for an impromptu orientation session for a group of novices. Oh, what joy it was to climb down and be forced to step away from the wall I was already climbing on to watch them settle in and never vacate the wall for the duration of my visit, thereby placing my climbing on hold indefinitely. It was a waste of time and money.

As for safety, well, let's just say it was a bit of a concern. The provided mats, which essentially had the bare minimum of padding, were strategically placed so that the thrill of potentially veering off the edge into the abyss of a hard floor was always a possibility.. On the second floor there was a section where the crash pad ended right at the edge of the climb, meaning if you fell even the slightest bit to the right, you’d end up hurting yourself badly on the unforgiving hard floor.

To sum it all up, this gym might serve as an interesting playground for newcomers, but for those with higher expectations (or even medium expectations) or those that take pride in climbing, this place falls short. If only I could give a lower rating, I would, but I can’t so one star will...

OK, two points.

Sport Climbers Attention If you learned lead climbing at any gym/outdoor other than True North, you will NOT BE WELCOMED to lead climb here. My partner and I learned lead climbing at a different gym in Toronto. We have been certified to lead climb at ALL other climbing gyms(those have lead climbing wall, including Joe, Rock Oasis, Boulderz, Hub Mississauga, AllezUp) in Toronto and Montreal without any issues. We have been lead climbing actively both indoor at those gyms and outdoor for the past year. However, this gym failed us in the lead test and scammed $20 from each of us. They are excessively and unnecessarily picky on safety-unrelated measures so that they could gaslight us to either buy their lead courses or take lead test endlessly to get the $20 back.

Unsafe facilities. The cylinder-looking sport climbing wall right next to the front desk is unstable. The wall is shaking when I make the first move. I stopped and my belayer lowered me down immediately. I couldn’t trust it. For bouldering, only the major section has thick and soft mat. Other two sections use the hard flooring, which will 100% brings higher risk of ankle twist when falling.

Other than these, the route setting is a lot fun. Very diverse and creative. Holds are just ok. Kinda old and dirty. Front desks are friendly and patient.

So, I have canceled my membership and will not visit again in any near future, even though I have paid for another month. I know you will find my phone number in your system. Please don’t be disturbing. I wish the owner would take these two points into consideration and make it a better climbing gym in the future. Best.

(btw, it’s funny that you use the picture taking from UpTheBloc, another bouldering gym in Mississauga on your poster. No matter whether you have the copyright, you better use something else from...