Vertical World Seattle — Local services in Seattle

I've been a member here for 2.5 years. Vertical world has been consistently great until the past three months, when it's started to let me down. I really don't know what went wrong. Coming out of the worst of the pandemic, the experience I had there was just as good as before. There are a few specific things that have gone down hill, all having do do with route setting.

1. The quality of routes set has gone down. There are a few route setters that have been with the gym the entire time I've been a member, and their routes are as good as ever. The routes around theirs though, have gotten to be, well boring. They lack any sort of direction or creativity. They tend to be too simple or, if not too simple, too gimmicky. These routes aren't easy or hard in a fun way, they're just easy or hard and often not worth climbing. There seems to be a number of new route setters, so time may lead to improvement, but at the moment routes are sub par.

2. Route turnover has ground to a near standstill, tanking route variety as a result. Routes and problems now stay up for months at a time. Nothing is more emblematic of this than the Valentines Day couple's climb. It has an entire corner of the gym all to itself and is still up almost 2 months after Valentine's Day. The area it occupies normally has 6 routes, but because of the couples climb, has just 1. There's also the issue of the spray wall in the bouldering cave. It's been up for 4+ weeks and occupies a quarter of the cave. Routes also go weeks without being graded. As of 4/11, boulder problems set on 3/23 have not received grades. With fewer routes in the gym, it's easy to get bored and stop coming back as often.

3. Most problematic of all, the distribution of grades has become skewed. Right now the top rope section of the gym seems to have been set by and for either 5.11 climbers, or 5.12c+ climbers. While I can climb these 5.11s, I'm left disappointed because there are few routes I can push into the low 5.12s on. In turn, my girlfriend is disappointed because she is trying to push to then through 5.10d, but can't find many routes that fit the bill. Combine this with low turnover of routes and you just simply run out of real estate in which to climb. I attribute much of this to poor route setting. This used to be a gym where you could ramp from a novice to a very good climber. I did so myself. But I can't imagine doing that with the routes set now.

I've tried to put a finger on the root of the problem, but can't. The gym seems adequately staffed, with as many as half a dozen team members behind the front desk alone. The new route setters haven't appeared up to the task of setting, but with 7 on their website, this doesn't explain the low route turnover rate. It really just seems that something needs to improve.

This week saw the final straw that encouraged me to write this review. The gym hosted a recent youth climbing competition that closed 2/3 of the lead climbing area for few days. Annoying, but not a real issue. The problem was, when the area opened up, the competition area was down to 1 route per bolt line instead of the usual 2-3. There are now less than half as many lead routes as normal and, if recent history is a guide, it's hard to believe more will be set anytime soon. I'll still go the the gym. Outdoor season is coming and I've had a great time in the past. There's enough for me there, but it's hard to recommend it to anyone anymore. I really hope the staff is able to solve their...

Tonight I went in to vertical world to get my lead certification and had a pretty frustrating experience. I recently took a lead class at a different gym, so this was my first official test but we went over the expectations for a lead test in the course I took previously. The person administering my test seemingly had not done so on her own before, at least that's what I heard her say at the front desk, so she had another staff member supervising the test. Her instructions to me were: make sure you're clipping correctly, any missed draws or incorrect clips will result in failure, then once you clip the draw in the fall zone, touch the final hold in the route and then take a fall. I did exactly as she said, clipped my final draw, touched the last hold, then fell. Then, they abruptly said that I needed to be lowered for failure of the exam which was awfully confusing as I had done everything that they told me to do and I didn't clip incorrectly at any point in the route.

Once I got back to the mat, this girl and her coworker told me that I failed because I didn't touch the last hold. I said I very much did, my belay partner agreed. Then they say "well you didn't touch it with two hands," so I say "you didn't say to touch it with two hands," so they responded "yeah, you need to finish the route, hold the last hold with both hands, and then fall." This to me is plainly different than the instructions they gave me before I started which were, "touch the last hold," and regardless, a poor reason to fail someone considering the difference was maybe an inch of distance in the fall. After I pushed back on this change in instruction, the girl admitted that she did in fact not tell me to complete the route with both hands, and they had me climb the entire thing again immediately before passing me which was exhausting and frustrating.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend who was belaying me said that the two employees were busy talking during my test about their inner workplace crushes which in itself is highly unprofessional when they are expected to be administering a safety test, but altogether even more irritating considering they had me do it twice, only reluctantly, because they weren't paying attention and then felt it was justified to argue with me over their own inability to provide clear instructions.

On top of all that, my belayer was standing about 3 feet away from the wall while I was climbing, as you should when lead belaying, and one of the employees told him he didn't need to stand that close to the wall when belaying me, which is simply bad practice.

The whole thing was frustrating and having read reviews of other people having bad lead test experiences here, it just seems like VW doesn't care about the actual safety aspect of their belay checks which is the whole point of it all. A combination of unprofessionalism, carelessness, and bad belay advice has left a bad taste in my mouth for this gym and the legitimacy...

My regular climbing gym is the Seattle Bouldering Project. SBP has all of the amenities and features I am about to list as falling short at Vertical World.

The staff were indifferent. The gal at the front desk mentioned some upcoming price increase. When my friend brought up how he recently joined and wasn't aware, she stated he should have received an email about it. The message it sent was take it or leave it. To this I reiterate that I am a member of the (cheaper, friendlier, more amenities) SPB, and this was my first visit to VW on a free guest pass.

I needed to do the belay test, and I have only been top roping a few times. The same staff member stopped us while rehearsing, saying practicing for the belay test is not allowed. I was abruptly given my belay test, which I failed. Bummer. I would have to have my lead certified friends tie my knots. Not a problem.

Next, I was informed that it is forbidden to practice knots on the premises. My friend has a rope, yet if I touch it, we all risk being kicked out. She said it had to do with liability, but I had already agreed to let my friends tie the knots I would use for climbing, so the matter-of-fact reason strikes me as questionable. I would love to hear the scenario where my sitting on a bench practicing knots on my own rope ends up with somebody going to the hospital or dying on site.

I am okay with postponing the belay test, spending a few minutes refreshing, and doing it again later. What I am not okay with is the strict policy against learning/exchanging information unless it involves hiring one of their trainers to carry out the training. There is plenty of downtime when you are climbing within a group, and it feels like a punishment to be forbidden from catching up on what most agree becomes secondhand knowledge quickly. Furthermore, I already signed a waiver agreeing not to sue them for any personal injury, and par for EVERY climb is checking knot and each others' harness straps. Climbing culture in general strikes me as collaborative and supportive, and this VW policy is counter to that spirit.

The floors are hard. For all of the concern about safe climbing, there is not much to absorb the falls of climbers and boulderers. The expectation that you follow the feet, butt, back routine as best you can is clearly evident in signage on site, but softer mats do exist.

Parking is sparse, one men's shower as far as I could see, unsure whether there is a sauna, no restaurant/lounge, small gym upstairs. They do have free lockers for what it's worth.

The routes themselves were a lot of fun, and the customers/members were friendly. I may end up back there should I join my friends in the area for group top roping, but I won't be expecting much more than irritation...