International Climbing Celebrity

Last night, one of the five CUMC climbing cars going to an indoor gym went to the newly opened Harlow climbing gym rather than the standard Mile End. I was in that car, which was good -- I was happy to check out the new wall and excited that it was all routes (as opposed to the more bouldering-based Mile End). I knew that I would have to pay a one-time "registration fee" of five pounds that all the walls in England seemingly have (I still don't know why), but I wanted to see it, plus it was a little closer to Cambridge than Mile End.

Pros
Harlow did have some good things going for it. The taller walls were reportedly about 40 feet high (they did feel like at least 35), and they had some good angles. They didn't have much in the way of severe overhangs, but they also didn't use up all their available space with highly-featured slabs (although they did have a few of those). Most of the taller walls, in fact, were unfeatured plywood -- which I strongly prefer to the messy overfeatured walls that are so common in England. There was both a lot of leading and a lot of toproping, unlike a lot of other gyms in England where most lines are only one or the other. There were probably about 40 stations in total, but I bet that at least 10 of them are never going to have anything harder than 5.7 on them -- they're sort of the equivalent of station 1 at MetroRock, except that they take up about a quarter of the total stations. But that's still superior to Mile End's ~15 stations for routes.

It's closer to Cambridge than Mile End, and stays open later (10pm as opposed to 9:30). There is no nearby kebab shop that we have to spend time faffing at outside in the cold after climbing, either (although there is an indoor cafe that three of the five of us went up to to get snacks at -- my belayer wanted to go with the other three to get snacks, but didn't quite dare ask to go, so I didn't let him -- so I didn't have to be involved in the snacking). So because it's closer to Cambridge and stays open later, we get about 2.5 hours of climbing rather than the ~1.5 we get at Mile End. Finally, crucially, it is much, much, much less crowded than Mile End -- there were probably only about 25 people in there in total (at Mile End, the tiny section of routes often ends up with 25 people in it alone, with probably at least 100 more in the various bouldering sections on Wednesday nights).

Cons
There are a lot of these. The biggest problem was with the routesetting. The gym sets by hold color, which is as okay as it can hope to be at the moment because (a) the holds are still new and easily distinguishable and (b) there is equal variety among holds of the same color as there is between holds of different colors (but I'll move on to holds separately in a minute). So the hold-color system itself isn't the biggest problem. The problem is that rumor has it, the gym only has one route setter so far. Which I believe, based on the routes. So the majority of stations only had one route on them, although there were a few with two. (On stations with two routes, they give a grade to the route you can do by using both colors, which always annoys me -- that's just un-thought-out rainbowing and shouldn't be counted as a route on its own.) This route setter has some interesting quirks. His easier routes are terrible. Literally right-left-right-left the whole way up the wall. A ladder. And his routes in the 5.10 range were sort of BK-style routes -- the holds started to get further and further apart. However, in the 5.11 range, the routes suddenly started to get surprisingly better, so I started to suspect that the route setter was more lazy than just bad (although sometimes he was definitely bad, too).

The problem, though, is that the route setter seems to be applying an artificial curve to grading his routes (just like HLS!). The routes are all a lot more similar in difficulty than the grades would suggest. The 4's and 5's (the grades were done in French) were somewhat more challenging than they should have been, but the 6's and 7's were soft. There were a few token "hard" 7's and an 8a, but the apex of the bell curve was probably barely 6a and then dropped off steeply. I suspect, though, that the setter probably doesn't climb much harder than 5.11, and I suspect that the hard 7's and 8a would be choss piles. The grades weren't extremely consistent among themselves, but they also weren't unacceptably way off from themselves (although, like I said, the hard 6's and easy 7's were soft and squishy).

Another issue is that I'm not sure that the setter has anyone check his routes after setting them (including himself). There were at least two routes that I did that were all very consistent with a sudden ridiculous crux that is way out of character. In one of them, a little foothold would have made an obvious difference, and I'm not sure whether the setter actually ran that route and realized his problem. The other one was a 7a. I had already onsighted two "7a's" (which were really only about .11a and .11b, respectively), and I was happily making my way up this third 7a, which seemed consistent with the first two. The problem was, though, I suddenly got two the final two holds before the top jug, and there was a GIANT move. Like, you could either do an all-out dyno or do some arete work that was completely out of character with the rest of the route (and it's not even clear whether or not the arete is on) (I eventually did do the move using the arete). What's the deal? I'm not sure that the setter ever really ran the route. Or maybe they did but got bored before doing the final move. The distance of the final move isn't obvious from the ground because perspective makes it look smaller than it is. So even though the setter is generally good at setting things that are in the "real 5.11" range, the setter's laziness messes things up for himself.

The next issue was holds. All the holds are made by the same company -- Top30. It appears that Top30 made the short featured walls, as well. The holds were all quite basic small shapes. There was nothing interesting at all. I think oftentimes when gyms set by hold color they're limited to only buying from a few companies so that they don't have, say, yellows that don't quite match other yellows. But, as you can see from the photos here, these holds are particularly dull. No giant green teeth, that's for sure.

The other problems were more surmountable, but still bear mentioning. One is that there is still no heat, and apparently there may not be any installed for a while. I was aware of this possibility going in, so brought a hat and several fleece coats, but they need to get on top of this (although it's not unmanageable -- England doesn't get that cold). It's also sort of set in a weird position apart from a general sports center -- lockers/changing rooms/bathroom are in one area and the wall is up one set of stairs, down another set of stairs, and actually in a separate building from the main one where the changing rooms are. (I'm actually pretty sure that it would be extremely easy to walk right into the climbing wall without paying if you knew where you were going.) They also only have about 10 parking spaces on site (oh England), and if those are full you have to park about a five minute walk away. (I stepped in a puddle in my flippies on the walk back to the car.) As hinted at, they use too much of their real estate on featured slabs (and, yes, the wheelchair rappel station...), but they do have a high proportion of tall, simple plywood compared to other English walls. Also, there is no bouldering at all -- I wouldn't mind a little bit. If I owned it I would rip out the featured slabs and replace that section with a bouldering cave.

So those are the cons.

My absolute favorite part, though, was when a girl came over to me and said

Sorry, but do you climb at MetroRock?

Umm, YES.

It turns out that she had been at Harvard as a post-doc for two years doing astrophysics, but had since returned to England and was now at Cambridge University as of a few months ago (she hadn't heard of CUMC). She said she was there with her husband and they had been debating whether or not I was the same as the person at MetroRock. So she and her husband apparently go down to the Castle in London quite frequently, so I can communicate with her if I'm interested in getting rides there.

But yeah, what can I say? I'm noticeable.