Portland Rock Gym - Beaverton — Local services in Beaverton

This gym sells stickers that say "Not a Corporate Gym." I've never been in a community gym that felt the need to make that distinction. I've never been in a community gym where the staff never learned my name. I've never been in a community gym that costs $105/month (at time of posting) to be a member. TL;DR this is the worst gym I have ever been to in 10 years of climbing across the country, and if you have $105 to spend on a climbing membership in Beaverton, go to somewhere like Stoneworks and buy memberships for your friends too.

In my time as a member here I was aggrieved mostly by the setting and the culture perpetuated by the establishment. I'll start with the setting, which is at best uninspiring, awkward, and unfun. At worst (and not infrequently) sets are outright dangerous. With awkward low-level climbs, particularly tall slabby boulders, it is hard to find a good entry-point for new climbers. I've had many friends new to climbing who are quickly discouraged and defeated by climbs well within their skill level because the movement is unfun, difficult to decipher, and honestly a little terrifying, just being 12+ feet off the pad on a slab. For more difficult sets, there is no pedagogy or sense of progression. Even at the most convolutedly-set gyms, I would see movement in V7+ sequences emulated in sets of a lower grade, but that is not the case here. Much of this has to do with their insistence on comp-style setting rather than including more prep for outdoor climbing. It also gives the feeling of a distinct lack of experience/direction in setting. Sets are incoherent, jumbled, and, again, unfun.

What's more, walls are so sparsely set that your options for what to climb are surprisingly limited given the size of the facility. Coupled with the fact that setting for the comp team is clearly a priority, it is often the case that entire sections of the gym are inaccessible to members like me, either due to the comp-style or due to the fact they are just flat closed. At one point they stripped half of the ropes area for a clinic and walls were down for a week. When they returned, there were half as many sets as there were before. I still paid the full fee that month for the privilege.

Maybe worst of all, sets are consistently dangerous. Climbing is an inherently dangerous sport, but this gym is full of pulley-popping V3's, committing heel-hooks at the top of boulder problems, spike-pits of volumes at the bottom of climbs, ankle-breaking holds under precarious feet, awkward dynos, wandering clipping lines, and a persistence in setting footholds directly underneath the rope line on lead climbs. It is also worth mentioning that for the longest time their topropes were single-wrapped around the anchor drum with no backup, meaning if the climber unweighted the rope at the top, they would be in danger shearing the rope and/or decking. I believe they fixed this to a double wrap, but the fact that it happened at all in a gym this new and expensive shocked me.

This brings me to the culture. It is hard to encapsulate something like this in a concrete review, but the overall feeling I had whenever I got there was loneliness. And for someone who has considered whatever local climbing gym a home for a decade, this was both shocking and depressing. The only staff who ever greeted me coming in were still in training, and somehow during training they lost that friendliness. The climbing team runs rampant, pushing climbers out of walls and training spaces, oftentimes aided by the coaches. And new climbers aren't taught the general ethics of being in a climbing gym, so there isn't conversation, just people fighting for space.

If you've read this far you're either very bored or very mad, but I hope this helps someone. I'd like to see the passion for climbing and community persist despite the commodification of the sport, but institutions like this masquerading as a community space are not the answer. You don't get to be community when it's convenient for you, and corporate when it's...

The climbing is really rough currently. Everyone is aware of the grading issues, and I mean everyone, as I overhear people talking about it litery every time in come in. The density of climbs is remarkably sparse, a lot of times wasting a majority of wall space but this is also fitting for this gym since the blueprint of the climbing walls in the building itself is incredibly wasteful with the square footage. Both of these issues compound into a really poor climbing environment because when you go in for new sets, after an already excruciatingly long period since the last new set of climbs, you only have a small handful of new climbs unless you're a V6 or higher climber. I wanted to get numbers on this so with the new sets that got put up from the week of 8/5/2024, I actually counted the total of new climbs. The total was 19. Objectively that number looks really good to me but when I break it down to levels is when my frustrations really arise. 8 of these are V4-6 or higher with specifically tough grading. This is not inviting whatsoever, contrary to the absurd reasoning behind the already detested range grading. It is no wonder why this place is still a ghost town besides peak hours. Despite having more bouldering wall space here than any individual Circuit Bouldering gym, this gym provides far less climbing. This gym is more equal parts "fitness," yoga and climbing than it is a rock gym. And not in a good way. It's like when you buy something to be the best of both worlds but when you put it into practice it can support both functions but is clearly far worse off than having one or the other. All in all it's just a huge bummer. I started here at the grand opening where I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Everything was great and climb density was nearly perfect as there were as many climbs then, without the anvil boulder, as there are now with "25% more wall space." Sadly, immediately after opening it went straight down hill. The larger of the two overhangs they had was not reset for 2 months and to this point has still only been replaced only 2 or 3 times since the opening in SEPTEMBER of last year. I've walked out of this gym frustrated or disappointed with these issues nearly every time I've left for at least my last 30 sessions but I can't abandon my extremely expensive membership so I'm stuck here for now. This review is very similar to the other bad reviews so sadly I hold out no hope for a change in a positive direction. Those have been there for a long time and nothing has been addressed so maybe check it out after the next new things open 🤷🏼‍♂️ 9/16 update: 0 of the before mentioned issues have been addressed to any capacity. The place is still dead almost all of the time because of it. The negative reviews also have far more reactions than the positive and it's not even close. It is hard to justify even showing up anymore because it causes more depression than gains at the end of the day. Can't even look at my climbing shoes with anything but disgust. For the "not corporate" thing they claim, this gym wholely embodies corporate climbing and is exactly everything that's wrong with gym climbing in general. Only comp style dynos (the not fun kind of dyno) and grading that forces you to feel like you're grade chasing even when you're warming up. It always just boils down to the fact that the climbing is the worst part of this "climbing" gym. 11/11 update: they're doing an event to boost the Google reviews of the gym, which 100% violates Google's TOS. Any review gets an entry to a sweepstakes for a month membership. Swing and miss after swing and miss. The single silver lining is the fitness, non climbing, equipment is abundant and no one is coming to use it. Sad caveat is that half of that new gym equipment either got set up or came in damaged because the standalone bench press and leg extension/hamstring curl machines are...

The walls themselves are good and the staff are nice but the gym is badly run and issues raised by members are not addressed. This makes the experience significantly worse than it should be.

If you enjoy projecting boulders over multiple sessions, this gym is poor choice. They sometimes take problems down with little to no notice if they want the walls for an event they didn't bother to notify members about ahead of time. This is a real bummer for those who invest a lot of time in long term projects and is the biggest factor in my rating.

After stripping the walls for events, it takes weeks for them to replace the problems from the event with new ones. They stripped several of the walls again after the event but only set a handful of problems on each of them and it's been like this for weeks.

The lack of notice before taking problems down is a specific example of their subpar overall communication. They often ignore emails and there is no consistent messaging. Different employees will tell you different things and no one seems to be sure about what is going on.

They also don't have a public route setting schedule. Normally, new problems are set on Thursdays and you can guess which section will be next based on how long the problems have been up. However, they sometimes deviate from this with no warning.

They recently switched to using grade ranges instead of single grades. I find it less satisfying to send a "V5-7" compared to a V6. The ranges make little sense as there is a huge difference between a V5 and a V7. The stated rational for switching to the ranges is inclusivity. However, making problems possible for climbers of different heights should simply be part of good  setting. I hope that the appearance of grade ranges does not mean that grades are going to start becoming much less accurate. The change happened just before their new bouldering wall is set to open so I can't help but wonder if the real motivation is to make setting more efficient by reducing the time required for forerunning.

They also don't seem inclined to listen to member feedback about other inclusivity issues. I've pointed out to management several times that their pullup bars (with a single exception outside of the main fitness area) are at the right height for someone around 6'3". Unless the gym's goal is to cater mostly to tall men, it might be a good idea to consider lowering some of the bars. Currently, they are a pain to use for shorter men and it is even more of a problem for women since they are shorter on average. The bars are clearly adjustable by removing a few bolts with a wrench and putting them in a lower hole so it would be easy to lower some of them.

The grading used to be pretty stiff at boulders below V5 compared to other gyms but it has unfortunately gotten a bit softer over the last few months. Some of the overhung V3s in particular used to have pretty technical footwork for the grade which made them more fun and better for practicing technique. The problems also used to tend to be crimpier than other gyms but now it's mostly larger holds with only a few crimpy problems. These changes have eroded the unique character that this gym used to have.

The music used to be at a reasonable volume but now it's too loud. Contrary to popular belief at many rock gyms, it is not necessary to crank...