This rock climbing gym is the most convenient for me to go to, however I feel like it leaves a lot to be desired. The overall vibe of this gym is very much college dudes garage which has a lot of potential to feel kind of trendy and charming, but it doesn’t play to that charm right and feels kind of dingy.

The location of it has become more appealing with relatively recent improvements to the area overall, and the exterior of the building on the backside is pretty cool, they have a neat mural that might would make me want to check it out if I were nearby, but when you approach the parking lot the building looks more like a rundown warehouse and I feel like renovations of the outside would make it seem a bit more inviting.

The inside is alright, I like the open space they have with all of the tables. But I do feel like they should reevaluate the furniture in the open area. I understand a portion of their business is hosting birthday party’s but between the public school lunch tables and the picnic tables I think one should be done away with, as well as the mat couches, should be replaced with furniture a bit more conducive to be either benches climbers can leave their stuff at or a better spot to chill out at between climbing. The lighting I also feel could be improved upon, it feels just a little to dim inside.

Most of the manually belayed climbs I definitely feel like need renovations. Most of them are ropes thrown over pipes on the ceiling which feels like a bare minimum way of accomplishing the intended job, and doesn’t quite feel reassuring. But their auto belayed climbs are up to standard. This gym also has some lead climbing I do like that there is options to boulder, top rope, and lead climb here.

Their routes however I do feel like leave a lot to be desired. I’m a relatively experienced climber and I’ve done a pretty good variety of indoor and out door climbing. I didn’t find that their top rope routes get to be difficult until 5.11 and I found their boulders to be inconsistent in rating but I could do most of their V6s. I did find that most of their routes boulder and top rope lack any real cool factor, neat solutions, or challenges apart from strength or reach. There was however one top rope that I could see myself projecting, which is the route the route that stars in a cave by the route of the week. The route of the week however has been the same for the last 6 weeks that I am aware of. Most of the boulders in my opinion are asinine, the routes I approached that had dynos felt like the dyno was really the only notable part of the climb and none of the dynos felt like anything to write home about. There is one boulder route that I am a fan of and that is the pink route inside the cave upstairs, I could see myself taking an evening to work on that route. Their boulders do need to be updated more frequently for a membership to be worthwhile for me as all of the routes have been the same throughout the whole gym every time I have been throughout the last 6 weeks.

This gym has an upstairs lounge and small bouldering area that I am a a fan of, I think that section is pretty well done. There is a downstairs area with gym equipment that looks like it doesn’t get used very often, the area is messy and doesn’t really have enough equipment that I would cancel my regular gym membership if I was a member here. However there is a foosball table in that section that is a nice form of entertainment between climbs.

From my observations the majority of the community at this gym is UTA students, as they have a climbing team. They seem to be friendly but doesn’t seem to be a community that expands or thrives revolving around this gym in particular. Apart from that it seems to mostly be small groups and families taking their kids here, so the community is friendly enough, but not a reason I would be drawn to this gym either. But it is definitely better than the weird vibes that I get at summit.

It’s not great but it’s the most convenient option I have.