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

24 November 2011

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

The bouldering room will be closed on Friday 25th November for a huge reset. All of the volumes are being changed and 20 new problems are going up ahead of the student bouldering competition this Saturday. We hope to have the bouldering room re-open in time for 7pm on the same day in time for The Project guys to be the first to try out the problems.

The primary focus this past month has been on the eagerly anticipated new bouldering cave, which is set to open at 7pm on Friday 25th November!

The monstrous beast of flat-roofed cave stretches nearly 5m by 5m and is probably one of the best facilities for those wishing to train specifically for horizontal climbing in Wales, if not the whole of the UK. On the lip of the cave, one side pulls round into a 35 degree overhang and the other side into a flat wall, giving a massive 9m potential straight line route length.

Come down and give the problems a go and let us know what you think.

In route setting news, Rob Napier will be coming down to Boulders on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd December to set some new awesome routes. We had some good customer feedback about Rob’s routes the last time he was here in October, so we look forward to climbing his new routes in December.

There will be a lot more route setting to come next month, so watch this space for further updates.

Come on down and get your climb on – it’s going to be epic!

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!