Alta Climbing and Fitness — Local services in Gilbert

I had been climbing at Alta (both locations) for a few months and I really tried to like it, but ultimately I couldn't and had to cancel my membership. I've been to many newer gyms and mega gyms and if we're comparing apples to apples Alta falls short. I agree with another reviewer that this isn't really a climber's gym. This is my comprehensive breakdown (because Alta has the potential to be great):

Setting: 1/5 This one's super subjective, but I'm not a fan of the setting style at Alta. It's hyper modern indoor climbing. Plenty of dynos, coordination, and comp style climbing if that's your thing. There's a lack of crimps and it feels like it's more about making fun looking problems and busting your shoulders for the gram than pulling hard on small edges and getting strong. Grading on routes is standard gym soft if not softer than average. Bouldering feels like a wildcard sometimes. Weirdly stiff V2, while a (crimpy) V7 felt like a 5. Problems didn't really flow and it was hard to find good projects because I was simply uninterested in them. I often finished a session feeling unenthused, whereas I usually enjoy a session at PRG or BRBG.

Facilities: 3/5 It's a clean gym. AC is bomber. Layout is okay. I think they could utilize some of the space better. Kids areas should just always be separate from everything; the autobelays are right next to the kids area. Gear shop is good. Has your standard equipment and tools. Though the shoe selection is interesting, it's nice they have some shoes like Tenaya (tarifa) and Mad Rock (drones), but they seem to lack your popular 'performance' shoes and brands, think solutions or dragos. Curious observation.

Training area :(/5 Weight room could be better. Has your standard box gym equipment. Cardio machines, cable machine, smith machine. But with all the space in their dedicated weight room it'd be nice to see some barbells and squat rack. Pullup bar is unfortunate (hey it's a climbing gym). Wish they had a separate pullup bar like every other gym instead of the high bars that are attached to/part of the big rack thing that holds the exercise balls. It's clunky and congested.

Moon board, campus board, and hangboards are upstairs, so if you want to do weighted hangs you'll need to lug the weights from downstairs. Rather inconvenient. The hangboards were once mounted too high up, and after user suggestions they did lower it.

Culture/Friendliness/Safety: Most of the people that climb here are new and transient, so it's hard to have a good climbing culture. In turn, among the staff it didn't feel that inviting in my experience.

Safety: ?/5 I was observing someone getting lead certed and the staff member (I think he's the manager or something?) giving the cert didn't seem attentive. The belayer was too far from the wall at the start of the climb where the climber would've decked if he fell, and I was surprised the belayer wasn't corrected (I did go up to the belayer later and offered advice; not sure if he passed his cert or not). I talked to this staff member about their lead cert protocol and whether or not a backup belayer was standard. I asked him what if someone falls? He said "noone has fallen yet" and "if they fall they shouldn't be climbing". I'm not a safety nut, but this isn't conducive and welcoming for a new gym where most of the clientele is new to the sport. I told him this and he shrugged it off. Guy didn't pass the vibe check and this is when I really felt Alta wasn't right for me.

tl;dr Look, it's a newer gym and maybe they have growing pains, but it could be better. It's a mega commercial gym and caters to the new and uninitiated. The sport of climbing is growing and Alta is introducing a lot of people to it which is great. Good for a quick romp up the wall, but if you want a more dirtbag, less after school experience I'd suggest...

Edits: moon board has lights now, yay the air movement is so great, I wish other gyms put the money into this! route setting needs a lot of work but to each their own :)

I’ve been coming to the gym on and off, in big spurts, over the past few years (I think since they opened) and I figured it would be worth writing a review!

FWIW I am primarily an outdoor climber and am generally not interested in gyms full of kid camps etc. I also don’t boulder and primarily lead climb.

Workout / Weight Area: Pretty extensive weights and cardio stuff, overall I’m pretty psyched when I’m around the area because I can climb and have access to a legit rack, etc

Climbing-Training: Moon board has no lights (??) but its definitely nice to have that and the tension board available. Hang boards are located in a useless location and they could and should certainly be relocated

Climbing walls: As others have noted, yeah, there could be better walls suited for lead climbing but it’s a good enough for fitness and there’s enough variety to be entertained on steeper stuff. Hold sets seem solid to me and provide fun variety

Hanging out / the front / overall facility: Surprisingly decent shop and couches , tables all around. Personally I wish there were more tables with outlets so I could spend the day there working and climbing. There’s a foot wash in the bathroom, good hand lotion, and ice machine (!), lots of cubbies. The place is really well thought out.

So what don’t I really like?

The route setting.

It’s clear to me that this gym isn’t catering to me and isn’t located in an area with tons and tons and tons of rock climbers (although that’s definitely changing) and the money is obviously in getting kids in the door.

But the route setting is always what makes me happy I’m leaving the area again and done climbing inside.

Given that it’s a great facility I really believe if the route setters were simply equipped with better training, workshops, or led by an experienced route setter, I’d give this place 5 stars.

Often the routes are just plain mediocre , if not downright terrible. Superfluous holds on some routes and heinous, impossible to clip stances on others.

Wandering routes, though I appreciate the intention of utilizing more real estate and the creativity, often end up with the rope running really poorly.

It’s hard to know what draws to clip and I’ve seen plenty of people misclip and then have to unclip and reclip elsewhere - this is bad setting.

Lots of draws have tape that isn’t maintained, making already hard to read clipping stances more confusing.

But more than anything the climbing just isn’t very natural, often super thrutchy and weird. This could totally be corrected and it would be awesome!!!

I’d be happy to elaborate more if anyone is actually interested in direct feedback on why I think the route setting is so poor on many of the...

THIS GYM IS NOT A SAFE SPACE FOR WOMEN OR POC! BEWARE. If I could genuinely give less than one star I would. I want to keep this review as brief and as blunt as possible. From the outside this gym seems very friendly and welcoming and the owners do pretend to do a good job at caring sincerely for the quality of their gym but the longer you spend time here you see how ridiculous things get when the polished is slightly wiped away. For starters, the gym is pretty much run by teenagers who are being enabled by the very few adults around to engage in gossip and inappropriate behaviors with guests. One of the shift leads is handsy and doesn't respect personal boundaries. The craziest part is that when you bring these things up to management AND owners they do not care and do not do anything but enable the behavior further. Managers will go into your account and constantly overdraft you or "accidentally" charge you double for classes. Employees face virtually no consequences unless they are sticking up for guests. Another incident that happened here: About 6 months ago a racist white man tried to threaten and intimidate me and a friend out of coming back to this gym. This had been brought to the owners attention multiple times but we were informed by a manager that this man was family friends with the owners therefore would face no consequences even with photo evidence of every racist thing he had said to us. Not to mention extremely fat phobic misogynistic comments. The owners have repeatedly said they would get back to us or update us about the situation but conveniently they keep ignoring the situation. Because gossip is an insane issue here, if you make any sort of complaint staff will start to mistreat you almost immediately. If you are a person of color this gym will not be safe for you. Crazy white teenagers running around saying incredibly racist things while staff enables and encourages it all. The climbing community deserves...