Now, before I get much farther, I want to explain that travelling from Baltimore to Seattle skews something in the brain. I left my home a touch before 5AM EST, took two flights, saw the Space Needle and Experience Music Project (I recommend both if you haven’t been), hit the Seattle Bouldering Project at 5:30PST and left the gym at 7:30 PST (aka 10:30PM EST), so I was certainly not at 100%.  All that aside, I have to say…..  that place is awesome.

While SBP is a bouldering only gym, it claims to be the largest bouldering only gym in the world. They treat members awesome – sauna, yoga classes, outdoor dining tables, gobs of parking, gobs more of bicycle parking (it is Seattle after all), the works.  The entire floor is a continuous pad, no satellites to drag andor break your ankle on.  All angles are represented well, slab inclusive, and there are two, that’s right two, top out boulders. All the holds feel new, I might have found all of one chipped hold to exploit. Old, glossy, urethane holds (like, any gym that has an original 50+ lb Pusher Boss) make me nostalgic, but there is something to be said for fresh shapes and textures.  I was a more than a little tired, but being the person I am, I proceeded to find routes to project, and they did not disappoint. Movement was good and varied, and if I ever go back, I could easily spend hours knocking out intermediates, and while I was exhausted, I feel safe in saying that the grades were about on point.

Three things struck me. The first is the staff, the desk staffer took me on a fast full tour, explained the layout, the grades, and the features of the gym. That intro, even through I was tempted to blow it off as a climbing gym veteran, was worthwhile.

The second was how proud the walls were.  These things felt tall compared to most gym I’ve been in, with desperate moves high off the well padded floor.  That 17 feet of height lets you get a lot of movement in without having to traverse non-stop.

The last was the grading scheme. Grades are indicated by colors, white being the easiest, black the hardest, and the rainbow in between. What I appreciate most is that the scale overlaps itself.  For instance, Orange covers V5-V7ish, Purple covers V6-V8, and black is V8+.  This method serves 2 purposes – it breaks you of focusing on the numbers, and if you are chasing a color routes, it’s much more likely that you will end up pushing yourself in making burns on something above what you perceive to be your ability. Shattering your mental grade bubble, you could be a self described V4-climber projected 6’s without even knowing it.  Its a new slant on an old scheme – Climb Time in Ohio has only 3 grade delineations, easy/medium/hard, but I think having 7 splits to cover 11+ grades gives more fidelity without going overboard. 

That said, for you number junkies, there are small placards at the edge of each “zone” that have the numeric grade for each problem nearby. The only flaws I can find with the place were a perceived lack of climate control, the big garage door open on an uncharacteristically hot and humid Seattle day had me sweating, and in a few spots the velcro’ed floor seams were noticeably stiffer than the rest of the floor and could trip you up.  That said, I doubt its enough to roll your ankle, and is still light years ahead of some of the burlap-over-gravel floors I’ve seen in other gyms.  Staring at the number placards, I did not see anything north of V10 for you super hardcore folks, but while I made progress on a lot of the V8’s, I certainly didn’t finish any, even in 2 sessions.

If you are in Seattle, and you’ve seen all the touristy stuff already, and its too wet or rushed to get out to Leavenworth or Gold Bar, stop in.  You won’t regret it.

-Justin Meserve gets to travel for work and probably ends up climbing more than doing his job while he is away.  We like to joke that he volunteers to travel so he can see more places than the rest of us.