Rise Up Climbing — Local services in Lynchburg

For casual visitors, this place is overall decent. The bouldering area is decent enough for beginner climbers and the rigs for climbing up the larger walls are friendly to newcomers. There appears to be little risk in the setups for inexperienced climbers/belayers, and their design allows people to switch walls with ease. Also, the staff here are generally friendly and helpful. All of my interactions with them were pleasant.

For competitive and dedicated climbers, this place is average. My chief complaint is that bouldering and toproping routes just aren't fun to climb, and there is little opportunity to climb in your respective style. I get the vibe that you have to have seen the route setter's beta in order to complete a route; you have to do it the setter's way or not at all. This isn't always a bad thing, but it is really frustrating here. Shorter climbers are given little to no consideration in route-setting, and taller climbers are clumped onto the wall in contorted ways that will just never work because of their build/body type. As you can imagine this also leads to massive disparities in ratings for routes. A route with all "jugs" on a 10 foot wall and a route with all "crimps" on a 15 foot overhang wall may both be rated V1 (I have actually encountered this here). This is furthered by customers being allowed to rate routes which is a good idea in theory, but in reality you get really strong "regulars" who significantly underrate climbs and contribute to the disparity. Even worse, this disparity appears to go unnoticed: there are extremely easy routes that have the appropriate rating while there are significantly harder routes with the same rating. It creates an illusion that there are easy routes for beginner and intermediate climbers, when the reality is that there are a lot of hard routes passed off as beginner routes.

I get the impression that the staff have little experience developing routes for a varied customer base, and that they don't test the routes before slapping a "rate me" sticker on it. In support of this, holds in the bouldering area just aren't secured on new routes. I have spun between 3-5 holds every day I have climbed here, and it deters me from trying anything too high. This isn't exactly their fault, it is difficult to set routes that are difficult and that meet the varied styles of climbing and bodies types.

EDIT: Most of the issues with bouldering routes appear to be mirrored in toproping routes.

TLDR: A good gym for casual visitors, and a decent gym for serious climbers. Route development needs improvement if they want to accomodate beginner, intermediate, and shorter climbers but the facility is good. I have had some good afternoons here, but overall feel that there is definitely some room for...

After being a faithful member for over a year, I can honestly say Rise-up has made a handful of decidedly good changes. They added showers, a real yoga studio, a bouldering cave and a solid weightlifting area. Unfortunately, their outdated facility is still plagued by countless spinners, inconsistent route quality/turnover, and inconsistent/unclear messaging from the staff.

After talking with a staff member about cancelling my membership about three weeks ago I was assured that I just needed to make sure I cancelled my membership before the 10th of the following month (date of billing) so to avoid being charged for an additional month. Unfortunately it appears that said staff member was mistaken. After putting in my cancellation request in on the 3rd I went to talk to JB ( gym co-owner) so to confirm I would not be billed for an additional month.

JB informed me that I would be charged for an additional month regardless of the fact that His employee was propagating incorrect information. He explained that their membership policies outline that you must cancel your membership before the 1st of the month to not be charged for the following month. Furthermore, they increased their membership fee without sending an email out to inform their members.

I can accept the fact that I should have read all of the fine print instead of asking an employee for information but the rude, careless, and dismissive attitude displayed by the gym management was honestly shocking. I suppose customer service and honest business practices do not matter when you have no competition. All other staff members have been...

I would love to see an elliptical and treadmil here. I have no problem paying 100 a month to climb, but for that price, I feel like you should get basic gym amenities as well. Yes, I could go to Planet Fitness or whatever for relatively cheap, but I don't want to stop climbing and drive somewhere else to finish my workout.

Free weights are fine. Nothing fancy, but it suits the needs of most. Just needs some kind of cardio machine.

It's a bit small, but there are some interesting routes, and a few V2-V5s will satisfy most intermediate climbers. I haven't done top rope here because I enjoy bouldering more, so I can't speak to that.

Also, a little more lighting or better lighting would improve the atmosphere, and honestly, it needs a really good cleaning. There are dust bunnies between the mats and the wall the size of my firstborn son. Not real hyped about it when I look down and see all the filth. Wouldn't take more than 30 minutes to vacuum up all the dust bunnies, although I'm sure it needs a more thorough...