Boulders Climbing Gym - Downtown — Local services in Madison

Having been climbing in gyms for 12 years across the US and abroad, I can honestly say I've never been to a more poorly managed gym than Boulders. For the last 10 years the membership prices at Boulders have always been a bit pricey but after the opening of the second location it's just getting ridiculous. The founder "appreciation" they show is letting us pay twice what we did two years ago for half of the setting staff.

Family prices for two adults used to be $65, and now we're paying $85 (or $65 for "founding" members) for a single person. If we were getting twice the value, sure, but I'm not sure if you guys realize that you can only climb in one gym at a time. Having two gyms doesn't make the membership worth twice as much. In fact letting half of your setting staff go, and letting the route quality drop as much as it has makes it worth LESS.

I'm not sure what management changes happened, but the quality of literally everything has dropped. Fire whoever is in charge of lead ropes at your east side location, it's insane. I can't count the number of times I come in and you're out of ropes with basically no one leading. Not to mention how insanely short they are. Just last week I came in and your staff told me they retired all the lead ropes and hadn't received the shipment of new ones. What short sighted incompetence are you guys allowing in a gym that has the potential to literally kill people?

Opening the down town gym was a colossal mistake that the loyal members of Boulders are paying for. It's obvious you're slowly realizing that you can't just open a gym in a popular part of town and attract new people to cover the insanely high rent. Every month it seems you're jacking up the prices because you're not attracting enough new customers. Clearly you did no market research, and have put no effort into insulating your existing customers from your dumb business decisions.

Overall Boulder's has average setting, very high prices, and terrible management.

Edit: Vertical Endeavors in Twin Cities built 3 new gyms and hasn't raised prices in the 12 years I've been, and they only charge $37/month. Adventure Rock on the other side only charges $55/month. Jacking your prices up to the "national average" (which they're well above surrounding gyms' prices) would make sense if you were anywhere near the national average quality for climbing gyms. These other gyms have higher quality facilities and lower prices.

If you need help understanding why your setting is below average, bring back the comments or just ask me when I'm there. I'm more than happy to give...

If i was reviewing just the staff it would be 5/5 stars, but other than that the gym is a joke compared to any others nationwide.

You are dodging air ducts with your head while trying to top boulders, and I had the pleasure of climbing here after a "comp" set. However not a single comp problem there, I had 3 points of contact on the wall at all times, and nothing was dynamic. The entire set was obviously done in 1 day, and if not, invest in better setters. Many route setting 101 rules are broken.

To top it all off the maximum grade there was a v8, and a light v8 at that. They say they have a "tension board" and "kilter board" however they just bought the holds and put it on slanted wall, no board included, no adjustable angle, and much smaller than any one ive been on.

Now for cleanliness, to start this is the only gym ive ever walked into and got a throat ache soon after entering, ontop of that when i blew my nose after leaving it was filled with dirty dark chalk and mucus. Secondly, this is the only gym ive ever been to where they do not let you take off your shoes, (so bye bye to that agressive pair you have, its now neutral) you must wear your climbing shoes on the mat at all times, so youd think they would be clean, despite that the matts are still the dirtiest ive ever seen, and have a odor unique to this gym. To add to that all of the holds were absolutely filthy, cheap, and are obviously never cleaned or rarely cleaned. To top it all off this is the only climbing gym ive been to with air dryers and no option for paper towels. You can see dried chalk spray all over the floor and walls from the air dryers, also obviously not cleaned.

This gym needs a lot of work, especially for the price, 20 dollars with no gear and 25 with shoes. However it will probably never happen due to the lack of competition in the area. Owners and management are obviously trying to rake in money with no care of how the gym feels; cheap holds, short staffed, bad volumes, skipping out on the real tension and kilter board, no gym facilities. Thankfully im from out of town so no need to come back. Wishing the local climbers the best and I hope to see this...

I have mixed feelings about the Boulders gyms.

I do agree with many of the other reviewers that their pricing is not as competitive as they think it is. If it truly is necessary for the downtown location, then it was indeed a bad choice of real estate considering the pricing restrictions it imposes and the wall height restrictions as well.

Some other reviews have also mentioned issues with the setting. I can't quite describe what it is, but it does feel a bit less interesting than in many other gyms I've been to. Maybe this was just the few sets I've seen in my few visits, but I feel like the harder climbs (highest 2 circuits) tend to be hard because they use miserable holds rather than hard because they require interesting movement.

The staff have all been welcoming and friendly. The setting frequency seems decent (in contrast to a few other reviews). I visit every month-month and a half and I believe the downtown had been completely turned over in that time.

A few other comments I have:

At the downtown location, the placement of the Kilter board right along the edge of the mats is just idiotic and dangerous -- you shouldn't need a spotter for an indoor board session.

At the east location, they have bouldering above lead climbing mats (that seem like they're probably older than me). These really aren't meant to absorb any meaningful fall and I would be pretty hesitant to do any sort of committing/horizontal move above them.

Not really a positive or a negative, but the grades are probably the most stout of any I've...