Central Rock Gym — Local services in Cambridge

Update: Okay - the first time I walked in here, I noped right out - it has the glaring lighting of a surgical theater, and the aesthetic charm of a strip mall…

Still, was I being unfair? Not entirely.

The good: The VB corner near the front is kind of cute - about a dozen adjacently spaced VB ladder-likes for warmups/children/absolute beginners. The new holds are nice and sandpapery, not a greasy one among them (yet). It’s big, has bigness, there’s lots of it.

Lots of equipment in the weight room, if you use equipment this is probably a plus

The not so good: Very little creativity in the routes YMMV, but I found there to be a lot of repetition and not much variety - sure there were dozens of routes at whichever rating you might choose - but literally nothing that gave me that romantic feeling of wanting to come back and back to a puzzle until I’d mastered it with my body and mind

A few routes had volumes or protruding holds intersecting unsafely with either the climb or fall… scary - don’t drop kiddos

The lighting - omg - did anyone perhaps think that people often look up when they’re at a climbing gym - when you do here, your vision is immediately pieced by these slender glaring 6000K LED strip lights - don’t look up kiddos

At least for now, no lockers in the rather tiny “locker” rooms

The also good: The people all seemed nice, mostly to be having a good time, and in general it felt like a safe space - this matters and boosts Central Rock Fresh Pond to a tepid 2-star rating in my book. I won’t be back, but that just means more space for the folks...

This is a great CRG for bouldering and weight training. It's large, and has a ton of options for varied skill levels.

Regarding bouldering, I'm relatively new, and I found it offered a great selection of VB through V2. In fact, have visited Watertown, Randolph, and Stoneham CRG locations, and this had the best beginner options (followed by Watertown, Randolph, and finally Stoneham). They also had plenty of other more difficult options, and I was very pleased to find newer rental shoes then the other locations (a different and better type as well).

With respect, strength training, their weight lifting and hanging sections are equal to that of Watertown if not more substantial.

As for the building, it's large as mentioned. The whole place is kind of a giant hallway that goes straight back with bouldering on your left and right, followed by strength training stuff in the back. There are showers in the men's bathroom. The place was very clean. Oh, and I noticed one Google review complained about lighting, but rest assured the lighting has no issues. No idea what they're talking about.

I've suspended my membership due to the cost ($115 / month) being hard to justify during the summer when I'll only visit once a week at best, but I'll certainly be doing day passes and visiting this location occasionally. It'd be nice if CRG could offer a discounted membership based on frequency of use, season, or bouldering versus top rope and...

I recently moved to Cambridge area and was excited to find a climbing gym close to my place, so I registered to Central Rock Cambridge. All went fine for a while until I interacted with the staff. After the first month using rental shoes, I decided to buy new shoes from the gym, after a few sessions using them, I soon realized that those shoes didn't sit well with me, they were too tight and painful I could hardly keep them on for 15mins, let alone climb with them. I tried repeatedly to bring that to the attention of the staff but they didn't heed any attention to what I said, they didn't even so much as inspect the shoes. All I understood from their reaction is that they didn't care, which was absolutely shocking to me. So I got in touch with the manager. After a few weeks of ignoring my emails, he finally replied to say that it was my problem and if I didn't like the shoes I could sell them back myself. Quote from his email: "I encourage you to try and sell them as virtually new, and if you make a print out would be happy to place it in the gym. Short of that, there's not much I can do for you, which I appologize for. " That is right people, we are in 2017, you buy shoes from a professional, you try to get a minimum after sale service and all you get is, there is nothing we can do for you, we don't care if you come or go. I stopped my membership and I am moving to another gym that actually values...