Inner Peaks South End — Attraction in Charlotte

Honest review incoming…

Okay so I found this place via Instagram reel and immediately knew I wanted to check it out next time I was in Charlotte. So I finally did so and first impression was “this place is huge!! This is going to be amazing” which was quickly dampened when I looked around and noticed only 7 auto belays in the entire 17k square foot gym. Tons and tons of top rope but for a chronic solo climber that’s not helpful.

Starting at check in - a 7 minute video is a bit excessive. Sign the waver and cover necessary safety when you do orientation. That’s pretty standard. This is first gym I’ve been to with an excessively long check in process for guests.

The staff was great though which is always nice.

Now onto the rest…I started with the auto belays and I’ve got to say I feel like a lot of them were realistically 5.6-5.8 but marked 5.10/5.11. There were definitely a couple really challenging ones but I would have liked to have seen better variety in difficult for the routes for the auto belay section. I think it’s extremely disappointing to walk in and see sooooo many routes only to realize there’s very very very few autos. This would be a huge downer for me if I lived in the area and had regular membership. I’m not a fan of belaying people myself due to how bad it irritates my shoulder so the fact that in order to have variety I would have to have another person there at all times is irritating.

Onto bouldering. I really didn’t do much of it because after 2 routes I realized that they are severely lacking the handles for getting back down for those who don’t want to be jumping 10-15 feet all day. Safety should be a priority and this is the first climbing gym I have been to that only puts 2 handles at the top of each bouldering route and doesn’t have them throughout for going back down. A lot of the rocks were awkward grips in my option for reversing back down and usually places have more of the handles so that once you finish route you always have solid grips for walking yourself back down. Maybe that’s not important to a lot of people but I don’t like jumping down more than absolutely necessary because it puts you at higher risk for injury and as someone who relies on physical activity for work and mental health I need to be extra safe and limit risk when possible.

There are a lot of positives I saw as well. The number of routes overall is impressive. It truly is a large facility for climbing compared to others I’ve seen. It has a gym that even day pass goers can use which isn’t always the case at climbing gyms. The facility seemed well maintained and I like the padding they use more than some others I’ve seen. Staff was nice and they had a large selection of harnesses and such in their store section which tends to be lacking at a lot of other gyms.

The experience overall was good but I see many areas where improvements...

The rock climbing/ bouldering experience was amazing and fit all experience levels of our group. Because we are from out of townWe called ahead to see if we needed reservations and was told no. We came with a party of 10 adults but only 5 participated in climbing. The others stayed at the front desk lounge area where there's seating and watched from afar. Staff (Melvin) greeted us and walked us through orientation and safely prepared us for our climbing. The experience quickly shifted on our way out of the door. The manager (Emma or Emily) who had just come in shift after our 2 hour climb inappropriately approached our party and asked "Who Coordinated this?" Our group thought she was referencing our matching shirts. But she was referring to the size of our party showing up on a busy day without a reservation. When we dug deeper she told us that her staff said a large party of 10 showed up and overwhelmed them at the front counter. In a more private conversation we let her know that we did call ahead . Moving forward Managers here should clarify policy and gripes with their staff so that we could have been given the proper information ahead of time, Instead of addressing your guests. What is more insult to injury is that there were 2 other participating parties of 5who showed up without reservations. Iknow because we had friendly conversations. The atmosphere was amazing among the guests. The other groups were not addressed the same as us, this moves me to believe that discrimination may have been at the root of Emma/Emily...

There is an alarming lack of new member/first timer education here that compromises the health and safety of everyone in the gym. Today alone, I've had multiple kids run below me on an overhanging boulder problem on multiple occasions, told (unsupervised) kids to not hop onto the wall on an adjacent problem at the same time as other people, and have seen parents trailing far behind their kids while they run around.

Today, I also saw people who looked to be first-timers wearing outside sneakers, and then at some points no shoes at all while on the walls. There's a ton of potential here for rolled ankles and broken necks.

I'm all for climbing accessibility, and I actually do love that more first-timers and kids are engaging with the activity and welcome them to the gym, but accessibility should not compromise safety. Charlotte isn't denver/SF. People here need more education than elsewhere, and the management here (not the staff) need to recognize and enforce that.

Just because there are no other gyms in the area doesn't mean IP is allowed to not have safety standards for newcomers. The standards for more experienced climbers are pretty robust, but they're not who they need to be worrying...