Sharma Climbing Barcelona - Rocódromo Escalada — Attraction in Barcelona

Flew into Barcelona specifically to climb at the Sharma Gyms. It’s my 40th birthday request and I was hoping to climb and meet Chris, climbing check, meet Chris will probably have to try another time.

The gym location seemed a bit strange, it was connected to a rather large building and couldn’t really find it until we walked past some open windows and saw inside.

Once inside it wasn’t busy (yet) we arrived just before people got off work. The check-in process was slow and painful. The staff was friendly and helpful but the system and process wasn’t the best. I was climbing and had to fill out a waiver/ sign up. My daughter (age 7) wanted to climb as well. They didn’t have a method to attach her to account so she manually created one by asking us to write all her info on a paper. My wife wanted to watch and she also had to create an account which I find strange. All in all during this process a line was forming. I was a bit surprised to pay 27.50 euro for a day pass for myself and daughter and shoe rental for daughter. After all most kids climb for 20-30 minutes and get bored (which happened). I only mention this because it seemed a monthly pass was 59 and for 27.50 it was only a single day climb.

After checkin did a quick look around, the gym was clean and well maintained. I didn’t see any signs of soggy pads or leaks and it had rain in the forecast. The bar area also looked nice although we didn’t use it. Daughter climbed mainly in the untagged zone. I think it was the warmup area. I did one or two and went straight for the bouldering just on other side. The gym itself was very warm I didn’t feel any air flowing, for people who get hit quickly I could see this as an issue. For myself I prefer it warm.

Climbing review The climbs themselves seemed to be rated ok, starting with green definitely on the easy side but I liked that it wasn’t just a bunch of holds everywhere, still some technique and thought into them. The yellows were the same. Nothing difficult and pretty well throughout. I will mention the holds overall seemed to be pretty slick or caked with chalk. Maybe the routes aren’t set frequently which would mean good cleaning of the holds when taken down? So, I’m saying I actually found one of the harder climbs being a yellow due to the chalk issue and an enormous move in the middle. All holds seemed pretty slick which maybe with some community brushes could be a bit better.

I did find a few red climbs that were probably rated too high and should have been yellows. The holds were small but very good / grippy and for me I wouldn’t put that in a red just because it’s slightly smaller.

The purple climbs that I did were also rated well. They are listed as 7a-7c and that’s the level I climb at, I think with the mentioned slickness issues they were still about that range. These were less worn and I’d say because they are climbed less then other routes. Most people I saw climbing were on the yellow range one or two on red. I saw one person attempt a purple but he was not a purple climber I’m not sure why he was even attempting it, perhaps to hype himself or try and show off.

I did not attempt any black climbs(rated 8a and above), I looked at one and thought about it (climbing in my head) but decided to not give it a go.

The walls were textured from what I experienced, I will say there was a bit of wear and tear in the higher volume spots. On the yellow climb that I mentioned was probably the hardest there was a volume hold that was worn and extremely smooth and required a bit more energy and strength. I cannot speak to other sections of the gym and I really climbed for about 1.5 hours non-stop and only covered 1/5th of the climbing area.

The gym over that 1.5hours got more busy. And people (some) didn’t have the climbing etiquette to wait often times just walking up and climbing or attempting whatever they could. Nothing against the gym.

As we were leaving there was an even longer line at the entrance.

4 stars because poor checkin process, price and...

This is a decent enough rock climbing gym as there's not a wide variety of choices but in my opinion, the culture of the gym could use some improvement -

Ability to down climb safely on problems: (1/10)

First and most importantly, there is a huge absence of thoughtfully set down-climbing holds which does not promote the safety and well being of your customers and climbers. Having been to other climbing gyms, there should be holds to sufficiently allow a climber to climb down safely rather than hope everyone can jump down without suffering some sort of injury by only using two or three holds to climb down. Just today I jumped down from a problem (pic of red tagged black pieces problem included. There are two safety holds and then nothing but purple holds of a black tag route to climb down with) and suffered a mild back injury that I can't help but imagine could've been avoided if more down-climbing was encouraged more at this gym.

Sanitation and sanitary practices: (2/10) I've seen people climb with bare feet on problems here and I've also seen people walk to the bathroom with their climbing shoes on and come back out to climb on problems. This is not at all sanitary and management should be ashamed of themselves for being so blase about health concerns. I would recommend putting up a sign to encourage removing climbing shoes prior to entering the bathroom and to further help promote a safe and sanitary culture at this gym. (It should be noted that while there is a rule stating not to wear climbing shoes into and out of the bathroom on their website, there is no displayed rule here in the gym)

Minor complaint - With it being the peak of summer, would it be so difficult to enter the gym and have all the fans operating and on? Numerous times I've come in just after opening hours and been somewhat miserable while climbing due to the lack of airflow. I think the staff could be a little more cognizant about the process of opening the gym to include turning on the ventilation.

Change in degree of difficulty of problems:

Within the last 1.5 months that I've been here, there has been a noticeable shift in how difficult the problems are. Maybe the route setter are responding to (assumed) "soft" routes. While I think challenging routes are only beneficial to those wanting to improve, I think the route setters should be weary of not making such radical changes so quickly so as to not completely discourage beginning climbers from making progress.

Cleanliness: (9/10) The mats here are always clean and I've never been bothered by any lack of cleanliness here aside from the aforementioned barefoot climbing or lack of established rules to not wear climbing shoes into and out of the restroom.

I do hope management of this gym makes progress to address these issues...

I was a member since 2019, learned how to climb there and also did the sport climbing course . Thanks to that i also started to go outdoors to climb. I hold a lot of good memories from those times.

I always felt that it was a little bit pricy (A day entry is like 14€) but the people there and the feeling after a good climbing session was worth the money.

However, it all started to change when the pandemics hit. I think a cause was that they just opened Madrid and were on the middle of opening Gavá.

Here are the reasons I think my love switched to disappointment:

They wanted to restore the Yoga classes but with an additional entrance fee. After the announcement they regretted and reverted back to free sessions.

Actually there are not much training sessions compared to how it used to be before.

The current user capacity has clearly exceeded the safety limits. There are just too much people and it increases day by day. However it is not funny when you jump from a climbing route and there are people talking/kids passing by/people leaning on the mattress.

Adding more fun, some parts of the mattress are totally given in and it's a little bit tricky to do the jumps. This was a problem from long ago.

Logically, there is a limited staff to control all those (sometimes very crazy, sometimes newbies) people.

-Also, talking about the staff, this company has the highest turnover I have ever seen. Not sure if they're underpaid or treated poorly. This being said their attitude was always very nice in general.

The gym facility hasn't received much maintenance, the yoga matts looks (and sadly feels) disgusting.

There is also a frightening increase of ambulance frequency passing by.

The smell of the place has gone up from "Sweat" to "I forgot my socks used in 5 climbing sessions on the car at 40°".

I heard they wanted to increase the prices even more.

I can basically reduce all the issues in one word: Money.

However, in my personal opinion, I belive sometimes gaining more money (not maintaining the mats, reduction of staff, excess of user capacity) can affect the safety of the climbers.

The thing is that there are not many options in Barcelona, so I think they can afford to take all these actions without much consequences.

But for me, It is clearly not...