Aiguille Rock Climbing Center — Attraction in Longwood

The bouldering: Whoever made the paths have no idea what a good bouldering path should look like. They're poorly constructed and like every hold in the building they're extraordinarily rough but slippery at the same time. I've been climbing for a year and this place shreds my hands but I can't do a v4 because of the holds. Also most paths are only about 10 feet so it's rather boring. They also have permanent holds on the sides of the walls, which is absurdly lazy. So are the random brown holds on one wall so it's a free for all for you on a single path. I don't understand the point of even having that wall

Overall layout: If you want to sit and talk with your pals between paths, good luck. There is no where to sit safely unless you want to sit about 30 feet away or on the benches that are too far away. The employees don't seem to care about safety in that regard. There isn't enough room for people to boulder and belay and watch in some areas, which is a huge liability. The floor where you climb is not meant for slipping and falling, which limits what you can practice. If you slip and fall from a weird position or tall height, it isn't going to feel good at all. It's padded but not nearly enough.

Gear: The rental shoes are terrible, they have absolutely no grip so even if you have a strong core, you can't use your feet to stay on the wall. Also they do not have chalk bags for rental so a lot of grips are greasy from sweat due to the lack of chalk

Pricing: You go thinking that it's $5.50 for belaying and $10 for bouldering. The bouldering holds true, and you have to pay for shoes. The belaying on the other hand is literally so you can stand there and hold the rope for someone. Who pays just for That? If you want to climbing top rope, for you and someone else it will be almost $50

Sanitation: They let you were your climbing shoes into the bathroom. That's absolutely disgusting. Do you want to climb on the bathroom floor?

I took my home gym for granted until I came here. None of the bouldering paths are worth my time, which is what I mainly do and I am not paying an absurd amount for terrible gear to try and belay. The employees don't seem to care about safety...

To be fair, I had a decent time for my first time here. The rock walls each had different levels and it’s an overall great time. I never tied the knots before or had to prepare belay but I appreciated the fact that they teach you how. However, that being said the staff members teaching us today were very pretentious. The guy was a jerk with snarky comments and digs when we were trying to replicate what he showed us. He went over it lazily and quickly and expected us to just get it the first time. He left shortly after but he had an attitude when teaching us how to tie a knot and was only nicer to the girls next to us saying flirty things like telling them he’s glad his girlfriend isn’t here. I don’t care how “savage” and edgy/funny you think you are but learn some respect towards your customers. Especially since you’re teaching people safety measures.

The girl was a bit more professional but when I was trying to follow the belay instructions exactly, she turns to my partner and thanks her for being so patient. This is my first time doing this, I finished the same time everyone else did, so don’t rush me through this. It’s safety you’re so concerned about and I’ve literally rock climbed 3x my whole life. The other places I went to didn’t teach us how to do the knots and set up the belay from scratch so chill out. Your job is to teach us. You want to hire college kids or high schoolers who act like they just got their first jobs cuz their parents do everything else? Train them up right instead of them being such impatient, entitled jerks who focus more on trying to be funny, are rude to everyone else and flirts with customers. You’re dealing with people, that’s your job. My friend and I ended up doing just fine so being a jerk while you’re teaching isn’t...

The only experience I have with rock climbing is those pop up walls you'll see at carnivals so I went in thinking I'd be a semi pro which obviously was not the case. That being said, there were still enough walls for my boyfriend and I (total beginners) to climb until we were exhausted. The auto belay walls were a tad too hard for us which was a shame since that's really what we wanted to do. We were originally not fond of the idea of bouldering, but after attempting it a few times we realize it's not too bad; it's a little scary to get to the top and then realize you have to climb back down to safety, but we got used to it after a bit. The majority of the walls were definitely aimed at more experienced climbers, but we still had fun trying the 5 or 6 paths deemed easy enough for us. The day entry price is affordable and grants you two hours of gym access and a harness rental for $15. If you want to rent shoes and or chalk in addition (which is recommended) that's another $6. For those interested in going more often, there's a $60 year membership which gives you access to the gym and discounts on rentals. The only downside for me was that it was very crowded. We were instructed not to climb directly next to others for safety reasons, but that was quite difficult on the auto belay wall considering there's only 4 lanes and the easiest lanes were next to an apparent fan favorite for the night. I may have misinterpreted those instructions though since I noticed people were frequently climbing next to one another. All in all, I had a blast and I would recommend Aiguille Rock Climbing Center to anyone interested...