2025 ended two months ago and I am still reeling, struggling to put all the pieces of a life that I had built around climbing over the years. It was announced last summer that after 24 years, the Triple Crown Bouldering Series would be ending. This was to be my twelfth year competing, so half of the total run time of the Series, and I was pumped to make it one of the best. Then I tore my teres major in training 3 weeks before the first stop in Hound Ears. I was gutted. Instead of going back to get my outstanding projects, I switched categories to Hellbilly (run the mountain and then chase stars) hoping to just chill on easy climbs and use my run training to have a good race.

Not sure where these damn mountain goats came from, but I placed 6th. In talking to some of them after the run, most had competed long before I got involved in 2013 and they live and run the hills around Boone and Asheville. Homefield advantage for sure. I was in pain most of the day and managed only 4 climbs for 6 stars. Obviously, this was not how I wanted my last Hound Ears to go. Two weeks later, and feeling a little better, I cut more than 3 minutes off my Hellbilly 4.2-mile run aaaaaand, still came in distant 6th despite setting a 3:20 PR on the course (and after placing 2nd by only 30 seconds last time I ran it). I did 10 problems for a total of 14 stars but still felt like my back and shoulder were tearing apart on 90% of the holds I touched. Finally, 4 weeks later, we had the finale at Horse Pens 40, and for the first time in my attendance, it was scheduled for the middle weekend of November rather than the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Earlier in the year, I had scheduled a marathon at the beginning of the month thinking that I would have 2 weeks to recover. Instead, I had 6 days, and guess where I placed in the “country mile” run…6th. I am nothing if not consistent. BUT my shoulder complex was 9 weeks on from injury and I felt about 80-90% recovered. I pushed like I hadn’t just been off from climbing for over two months and PR’d a marathon less than a week prior. I fought my way through cramps in my forearms, hamstrings, calves, and feet to 50 stars (a far cry from my 93 star best) to finish the day in 4^th place. For the series, I placed 2nd overall simply due to a war of attrition by attending all three events.

What should have been a banner year for me, based on my training metrics before getting hurt, turned into likely one of my worst fall competitive season I have ever had. Yes, even worse than 2017 when I tore my LCL but was still climbing V4 in a ¾ brace, but maybe slightly better than 2018 climbing in a cast wrapped in a boot. Having it be the last Triple Crown means there are no more opportunities to “come back stronger than ever,” and that hurts the ego more than anything. After placing so much of my time, training, PTO/travel schedule around this series, suddenly, it was over, and there was no going back. I had already made the decision to start alternating attendance each year in 2026 to pursue other adventures, and I admit that having the decision made for me by the Series coming to close took some of the weight of that choice off my mind, but it also left me feeling hollow. The Series was feeling like a favorite sweater, and maybe it had some holes or didn’t fit quite right anymore but having it in the back of the closet to pull out when the time felt right was still comforting, and now it is just gone. I will always cherish the memories and the friends that I made through the years, and I count myself lucky to have been associated with such a tremendous group of people. I contemplated a full farewell article, but the only words I came up with were cliché, so I will leave it that way by simply saying, “you had to be there.”

At least I was healing and still had my gym and that dedicated crew.

One month after we said goodbye to Triple Crown, Birmingham Boulders, my home gym since I moved to Alabama, announced that they will be closing at the end of 2025. An unhappy result of the building owner selling the property and the company not having the capacity to buy it outright with such short notice (11 days!). When I first joined, they also had First Avenue Rocks downtown, their original gym that spoke to my old school heart. Hand built in a poorly ventilated industrial garage with ancient holds and gaffers tape marking problems. In other words, heaven. After celebrating 10 years at the end of 2019, leasing agreements going up in the area forced a closure of that location and we all retreated to Birmingham Boulders (aka B2), their second location that opened in 2016. The closing of First Ave hurt, but with Covid shutting everything down a few months later, it felt like a blessing in disguise that we made out relatively unscathed and still had B2 when the world came back online. B2 had premium walls, the best holds, and The Forge, a training area of systems boards, various campus and hangboards, weights, treadmills, etc. It was perfect and had everything a solo boulderer, lifter, runner, and training aficionado could want. I built a great program. I was improving. I brought my then girlfriend and now wife. She felt more comfortable here than at the big corporate gym. She was getting stronger and more confident.

Unfortunately, post-Covid, it felt like the heart of the user base never really came back. They tried to have themed community nights to bring back the vibe, but attendance was low and retention was even lower. The fun comps stopped happening and everyone felt like we were just going through the motions. Groups cliqued up and rarely was there crossover or new faces. There was turnover in staff happening faster and faster (a death knell for any business) and the dedicated few that remained felt stymied and blocked at every turn to try and make it better.

Certainly there was more behind the scenes than what my friends on staff were privy to, let alone what they could share with members, but being blind-sided hurt. Maybe there was something we could have done if we knew there were actual problems months ago by crowd sourcing ideas. Who knows?

They managed to keep the training area with the weights, systems boards, hangboards, campus pyramids, and spray walls open via key tag through February 15^th while the main floor of the gym was broken down and removed, which was fortunate to have a grace period while people figured out their plans for how an where to move on. For me and my wife, the other corporate gym option is on the other side of town, the wrong way through traffic, and not near anything else that we do, plus the cost is significantly higher. For us, we joined a small regular gym near the house to keep weight training and general fitness up, and for me, I have shifted focus to other pursuits as my primary sport while still hangboarding at home to stay fit for outdoor climbing. Still, all of this change was a crushing way to start 2026.

Finally, while writing this, because of a two-prong issue regarding the closing of B2 and some inner politicking, one of my favorite outdoor comps was cancelled in January; The Sickness at Hospital Boulders. The owner of B2 wrote the guidebook for the area and had started and run the comp for 9 years, even through Covid, was effectively pushed out as the title sponsor for the event even before announcing their closure. I won’t get into the details that were shared, but disagreements with the Southeastern Climbers Coalition (SCC) lead to the cancellation of the comp entirely.

The SCC rallied and created a new comp for their winter series at the recently acquired Citadel and will host it in March. But even the SCC doesn’t feel familiar anymore. Their last two events that I attended felt disconnected from the climbing community as a whole. The leadership has had some of its own rapid turnover with the hired director in 2025 only lasting 2 months, and other positions headed out to do bigger and better things. The SCC is supposed to serve three states, and right now it feels like it serves exclusively Chattanooga, arguably the densest area of both rock and climbers in the southeast, and merely dabbles in the surrounding areas. At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, the new crop of leadership and volunteers don’t even feel like climbers, merely folks who are interested in climbing. I understand that we are weird bunch, out on the fringes of society, but including circus performances and jousting knights at events meant to promote climbing feels…off-brand. Not that those things aren’t interesting. Fire juggling will never not be impressive. They are just not related to why we are there.

All this personal plight to say, losing a Third Place has been difficult. There have been numerous articles and studies released over the years, citing the negative impacts of losing a place outside of home and work. This is a place to meet other people, experience arts, culture, entertainment, and/or sport. It is anchor point where you establish and build part of your identity. They include malls, adult rec leagues, gyms, classes, even bars, and clubs, or wherever it is that you go with regularity to engage with your community. For me, it felt like the world was shrinking rapidly, ripping away at all the connections that I had made and casting them to the wind to see where they would end up. My identity and habits as climber of over 20 years were suddenly ripped away not by the erosion of time, but by earthquake and flood and tornado. And I couldn’t even fully enjoy the twilight of an era laid up with an injury for 12 weeks. Surely I can still meet up with folks, but without the LITERAL space, a competition and a gym, that joined our lives and caused our circles to intersect, everything becomes much more intentional and, frankly, difficult. The same way many activities and spaces and relationships never recovered from the pandemic, so too do I fear that this is just another blow to anyone that counted these places as important to their day-to-day, weekly, even annual lives, habits, and rituals. Losing your Third Place feels hard, especially for the people that I know who dedicated all of their free time and social engagement to coming to that place, even on their “rest days.” I will make it through because I happen to have a lot irons in the fire (see more about what I’ve been cooking in my next installment), but for the ones where this was the biggest thing in lives outside of work, I feel for them.

I say this as a warning to anyone that is aware of drastic changes. Maybe it is a beloved place closing down, a program getting cancelled, or moving to a new city. Work hard to maintain those connections. Perhaps all it needs is someone to take up the mantle and carry the vision forward with the next generation. We already have a young person doing just that by working to recreate the Forge in a new location and adding value with a fancy coffee bar and light eats. They even purchased the famed Red Board from B2 to erect in their location! Third spaces don’t have to die, even as corporatism and greed continue to threaten where and how we meet. All it takes is a vision and some intentionality by dedicated people to build a community.

Tylor Streett, feels like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon; too old for this sh*t, but will keep trying to do sh*t for at least three sequels.