Bouldering room reset, new routes... plus Boulders opens massive new cave!

Thursday, Nov 24

Read all about it... bouldering room reset, student bouldering competition, route setting with Rob Napier and a huge new bouldering cave!

Click and drag the image in any direction to see some of the Bouldering Area:

Panoramas Phillip Roberts 2001 contact: 07812 173 788

Bouldering

One of the younger development in the sport of climbing. Climbing at low height without the hinderance of additional climbing safety equipment, allows greater focus on the pure movement of climbing and sequence of the boulder problem.

Boulders has a large dedicated bouldering facility, that when fully set boasts close to 100 problems from easy to V9, so there is something for everyone.

The area is made up of two massive bouldering walls, on one side there are slabs, vertical walls and 5 degree over hangs. On the other there are 20 degree, 35 degree and a stupidly steep (and wide!!) 45 degree wall down the opposite 25m side, all of which go to an intimidating 4 ½ m high. Climbing to the top of the 45 degree wall is certainly not for the faint hearted. Right next to all of this there's an introductory area, endurance wall, training area and an especially long 35m traverse wall for warming up or hitting the endurance.

The bouldering problems

We try to keep it simple. Easy to find starting holds and simple to follow routes, and yes all volumes are 'in'. Once you leave the floor any hold, in your chosen colour, or volume you can reach can be used to pull on, push against, body smear, jam, foot drag or whatever other crazy technique you might want to invent to get you to the top of the problem.

We have adopted the Fontainebleau grading system and set out the bouldering into colour coded circuits that get progressively harder from 1 – 10. There are also an additional 30 competition problems which make up The Crucible. These are in either white or black and can be any grade. So before you set off on some slopey crimp fest when you haven't warmed up just check the size of the holds you're about to climb on!