Vertical World North — Attraction in Mill Creek

I only recently re-discovered this gym because we were looking to practice offwidth crack climbing. It has all the normal stuff as far as bouldering, toproping and leading steep plastic. Plus it has a well equipped gym with free weights and aerobic machines: stair steppers and ellipticals.

Unlike many gyms they still have auto-belays. These aren’t dangerous in and of themselves, they’re well engineered. But due to user error and lawsuits they have been removed from many gyms.

But what really makes this gym special, and worth the trip...is the cracks.

Starting with the smallest, they have a ring lock crack that varies in width from half an inch to three quarters of an inch. That means rattly fingers for small hands, and locker fingers for big hands.

Next is a standard yellow number 2 camalot sized crack. This is perfect hands for most people. And it has an auto-belay so you can cruise up and down without a partner.

Next up are two variations on a blue number 3 camalot crack. With my XL sized hands, I was able to get easy steeples or tight fists in both of them. My friend with small hands struggled with these three to four inch cracks.

But the best crack of all, especially if you are training for Moab’s Indian Creek is the camalot number five crack. I stuck my big meat hooks in this five inch crack hoping for at least a marginal fist jam…but it was nothing but air. It was the proverbial hotdog in a hallway scenario. This crack is also in a corner, with one of the fist cracks nearby if you need to cheat. Anyway, it’s a fantastic size for learning hand fist stacking.

The crack is both too wide and too narrow to get any kind of heel toe jam. Initially neither of us could make uphill progress. After much struggle we found that we could get a secure no hands jam by sticking our left leg in up to the thigh. Then we jammed our right leg in up to the knee. With both legs deep in the crack and sort of opposing each other, we could let go with our hand fist stacks long enough to slide them up.

This was a full body, heart pounding workout. But wow, such good practice! This comes very close to some of the 5.11 offwidth nightmares at Indian Creek.

Beyond that, they had the usual wide selection of cubbies and lockers. They also had some free programmable electronic lockers for small items like phones and keys.

Vertical World was the first climbing gym in America. I remember going there in 1988. I’m really glad to see they are still running...

The cleanliness of the gym is good. The cost is a little high but comparable to other gyms. I signed my son up for the kids class. It was less of a class and more of a disconnected daycare. While they taught skills it was only as good as the instructors, and the instructors ranged from occasional passionate leaders to inexperienced young adults. My son was often just standing around waiting to climb. In 2 hours they only got 2-3 climbs in when lucky. Not worth the time or money I paid for him to learn and be challenged. They're were no check ins or progress reports to keep me updated. I had to constantly speak with the front desk to figure out if there was anything to be expected because the instructors were so busy to end class that my son was confused about the purpose of this training. I find that most parents just drop off their kids and leave. I would stay and observe but was often in the way of other climbers. There's a severe limit of seating. There's a lack of explaining and introduction overall. It was so bizarre. Like you pay almost $200/month and they act like you should feel lucky to be there. I don't recommend this gym for kids. Their kid program needs a...

We did not even get IN to go climbing. We asked to look at the kids area to see if it was even viable for nervous littles and we had to sign a waiver just to see it.

We thought it was strange, we just wanted one parent to run up and peep at it - but we said “ok”.

The problem is, the waiver system didn’t work after we filled the whole thing out the front desk said “well is didn’t go through”. So as we’re trying to understand what went wrong so we don’t make the same mistake twice, the front desk is acting put upon- as if we did it on purpose to annoy them.

The exasperation and inability to help us prompted our “never mind”. They didn’t apologize or try to fix the problem, not even as we said “it’s okay, today won’t work out”.

Coming from 15+ years in the service industry, we’re never mean or rude with those “serving” or helping us, and to act as though we specifically came in to annoy them was disappointing.

We had 4 people ready to climb and rent gear, and if the kids liked it, we would’ve signed up for a membership - we talked it up with them the...