Crimper's Climbing Gym — Local services in Christiansburg

I've come here every now and then when I visit my girlfriend and can honestly say I've never had a good experience with the staff, the policies here are a bit strange and some are very clearly meant to grab your money. I had brought a harness in to do autobelays and the staff told me I couldn't let my friends use it because it was "dangerous"... I've climbed for over 6 years, and worked at a few climbing gyms, not once have I ever heard of this "danger" so I asked them and they claim by taking the harness off and on it creates a danger, they didn't elaborate on how that posed any threat so it was clear this isn't about safety (ask pretty much any climber and I doubt they'll be able to say how it would be dangerous).

Besides the staff who seem kind of rude (some seem nice but none approachable in my friends and i's opinion in the multiple times we've gone) the routes are set harder than outdoors in my opinion, at least compared to new river gorge and the tape is so convoluted and messy it's a pain to read routes.

I gave you all a second star because despite my issues with all these things I do enjoy that the style is extremely different than anything I've seen and the training board/room is nice.

I'd love to raise the star level some day once I feel that staff are friendlier and the policies at least have a valid argument for safety...

Not a good gym for beginners. I was passing through the area and got a day pass. The routes are not set by hold color but instead with colored tape, where an orange route can be right next to an orange-with-moon-decorations route, making it very difficult to spot the next hold while on the wall. I consider myself an intermediate climber and can usually climb for a couple hours; even though I tried to plan out the whole route before starting I ended up spending so much time looking for the next hand/foot hold that I lost my grip strength after my first few climbs. The weight room was pretty good, with a few barbells; the hangboard area was under construction. I talked to some regulars and they were very friendly, they said it took them a while to get used to the tape system as well. Seems like a good place if you're an advanced climber in the area. I didn't try to top rope, they have some auto-belays but their top rope walls are only a few feet taller than their bouldering wall (which I believe was 16 feet). The pad under the traversal wall was thinner than a crash pad, I heard some stories of people getting hurt on it so I...

This seems to be a really great bouldering gym, but from the top rope and lead climbing perspective it’s not super exciting. 5 auto belays and a wall of top ropes, then one small section of lead climbing. Very little variation in the angle of the walls and not super high. The routes overall felt very “tall;” I’m 5’ 3” and really struggled to reach a lot of the holds, even on 5.8 and 9 routes. The route setting style was very boulder-y (to be expected for a bouldering gym!) with lots of power moves and minimal holds. Some of the 10 felt like they were just hard because there were minimal/really spaced out holds but were not actually that technical in the moves needed. I was visiting from out of town and wanted to get some climbing in with a friend, so it was ok for the day! Just know that if you’re going for sport climbing that that is definitely a secondary focus here. It’s also important to call ahead if it is your first time and you want to take your top rope or lead certification test, because they might not always have the staff available and in that case, you would just be limited to the auto belays...