Fantasy Gym: Rock Hard

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Fantasy Gyms, the blog segment in which I kill downtime at work messing around with Sketchup present new and exciting ideas for theoretical gyms! Previous fantasy gyms have included The Rock Box and The Starwhal. Check them out if you haven't!

For today's project, I started with building dimensions, creating a 10 x 15 meter building with a maximum roof height of 8 meters. Despite the Fantasy Gyms tag, this gym was designed with realism in mind- this is the sort of thing that one person could reasonably build, in a building of a sort that can be found all over Hokkaido, where I live. One of these days I'll do something really wild.

In addition to keeping things to a reasonable level of feasibility, I tried to focus on a couple of other guidelines in the design:

• The gym should provide an interesting variety of climbing surfaces and situations, obviously
• The gym should include space to rest and relax while not climbing
• The gym should lend itself to local competitions, which is to say that people should comfortably be able to watch the climbers. The two gyms I spend most of my time at are quite different in this regard, something I'll write a future blog post about
• The gym should contain as many totally sweet posters as possible. I did a pretty good job here but I think there's room for improvement.

Presenting: Rock Hard!

Sited in a completely vacant grassy field (apparently), Rock Hard used to be a, uh, we'll say storehouse for chain-link fence. 

Welcome! Here you see the front desk, made from plywood. Everything is made from plywood, because I love plywood. It's what drew me to climbing in the first place! But you didn't come for the check-in desk, as beautiful as it may be- turn left and you'll see the climbing area!

Enter the climbing area. Let the scent of chalk and sweat embrace you like a warm and very athletic grandmother.

The In n' Out

On the north side of the building we have the first segment of climbing wall, the In n' Out. The In n' Out is based around the Out, a 40-degree overhang with a 45-degree slab top for mantle problems. I'm a big fan of these kinds of mantle areas, and include them in most of my designs. The right side of the Out begins as a much shallower 20 degree overhang before transitioning to the 40 degree. The left side is the In, a cave with a 10-degree back wall that transitions into a 75-degree near-horizontal roof. This section, too, includes a mantle out; the top section is a 20 degree slab, making for a difficult transition from the roof. The left side of the Out, as you can see, pushes into the cave for a steep arete. Topout height of this section is just over 3 meters, and the section is 7 and a half meters long.

Another view of the In n' Out

Moving to the left of the cave area is a short transition section of vertical wall:

This transitional segment consists of three vertical walls of around 1.25 meters in width each. The corners are wide angles- I tried to avoid just having 90-degree transitions between walls, and add more interesting transitions. The corner leads into the back wall, a wide and flat 15-degree overhang. It's 4.5 meters off the ground, which means falling from up here will be exciting.

The back wall meets with this big overhang-thing, which I don't have a clever name for. The Pain Train? The Tickler? The Big Overhang Cave Thing? Your guess is as good as mine. The bottom area is 85 degrees of full-time fun, transitioning into a 45 degree area and finally a vertical finishing area.

I kind of like the name "The Pulverizer"

The side of this feature is slightly more than vertical, transitioning into vertical. Lately I like these sorts of roof-into-flat transition areas; I think they offer a lot of interesting moves. Like the back wall, this thing is over 4 meters tall, which is certainly enough to make me wet myself.

Moving on from the... uh, the big thing... is the last segment of wall. The centerpiece here is a big projecting prow, 30 degrees steepening to 50 degrees and only a meter across at the top. The theme here is arete moves, possibly on two aretes at a time. I'd probably call it Mr. Hugs.

To the left is another 15-degree wall that cuts back into a large crevice before joining the prow. This crevice has an inner angle of less than 90 degrees, and provides a good area for stemming moves and the like. Not strictly necessary, but I liked putting it there better than transitioning straight into the prow. The left side is a flat wall, and probably the best area for beginners. A 15 degree slab finishes out the wall.

On to the non-climbing stuff! Past the slab we see the raised deck, which if you haven't noticed is something I really like putting in. Climbers love hanging out in high places, right?

This area is strictly for Chilling. Chilling is an important and underrated part of a well-balanced climbing schedule. Really garish sofas, too. Of course the deck provides a good vantage for watching competitions and climbing events, too, but the chilling is the main point.

Gosh, these girders are fascinating!

Finishing out a mantle problem on the In n' Out takes one up to the deck, as I think having room to actually top out and walk out is cool. There's a ladder available for those who are too lame to go up this way or who don't want to navigate a boulder problem while holding a six-pack of beer (losers).

Below the deck, of course, is the important stuff. Don't mix up which of these areas is which, please!

And that about covers it! Let me know if you have any feedback- would this be fun to climb on? Boring? Interesting? Unrealistic? I have no idea what I'm doing, obviously, but I like thinking up designs for climbing gyms and you can't stop me.

As a preview of our next stop, I'm going to turn this decommissioned Mr. Donuts-

-into a sweet-ass gym! Maybe! It might still smell like donuts though.

Until next time!

Fantasy Gym: The Starwhal

Heya, folks, I'm back with another addition of Things I Wish I Had, aka Fantasy Gyms. Like last time's Rock Box, this wall is defined by a space constraint- in this case, height. The Starwhal is a simple one-wall training area, primarily useful for traversing. It is 12 meters in length and fits in a room with a three meters roof- only slightly higher than usual. This time I haven't made an actual gym with check-in and amenities- the Starwhal would be suited for a large home wall or for a sports club or training center.

As you can see, this wall isn't tall and it isn't very deep, either- the wall projects out 1.8 meters at the deepest, making it suitable for a long room that otherwise doesn't have a lot of room to spare. At no point would climbing the wall take more than two or three moves, but hey, that's what traversing is for!

I tried to pack in as much as I could in a limited space. The two major overhangs are at 15 degrees and 30 degrees, and the whole wall features a number of mini-arêtes and dihedrals.

Between the 15 and 30 degree segments is a flat bit with a tapered mini-chimney- this area could be used for all kinds of challenging reaches and backwards movements.The name "Starwhal" is, of course, taken from the big star-shaped feature in the center of the 15 degree area and the fact that naming climbing walls is pretty arbitrary. This feature can be used to change up a wide variety of holds- the bottom is nearly a roof, and the top is a mini-slab for difficult negative holds to be made usable.

This was a quick wall I put together to experiment with packing features into a small traverse wall and in making a wall that was visually appealing in a room that might serve other purposes. As you can see I tried spicing it up with colors, the colors here are more or less the theme colors of my village, but could also be great if you happen to be a Packers fan.

I think you could do a lot worse than a design like this if you found yourself with a single flat span of wall to work with when making a climbing area!

Fantasy Gym: The Rock Box

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Fantasy Gyms! This feature has absolutely nothing at all to do with my home bouldering wall project. Instead, I'll be introducing walls I've designed using The Magic of Sketchup. The gyms I make will generally follow some sort of restriction or theme in their design.

As a disclaimer, I'm an absolute scrub who's "experience" in this field is limited to one janky-ass demi-wall, visits to a few small-scale walls, and a lot of time on Sketchup. It should go without saying that I have no idea what I'm doing and my idea of what would make a good retail wall is basically based on me going "Oh that seems like it would be cool" or "I like climbing on this" or, in some cases, "What the hell can I even fit in this space." In no case should I be taken for an expert, and needless to say none of this stuff is intended to be, like, up to safety code or anything.

That said: Here's The Rock Box!

The idea for this wall was to make a full-featured gym in a concrete cube measuring 7.5 x 5 meters, with a height of 4.5 meters (to the lowest part of the roof). Obviously the "correct" way to build a gym in this sort of tiny location would be to expand the building, but I skipped that option here. Maybe the place is surrounded on all sides by, I don't know, historically-significant McDonalds locations or something. I don't know. This sort of small storage building is fairly common around Hokkaido so working with one of them is vaguely feasible. I guess. Needless to say, a facility of this size is going to be bouldering-only!

This location is not going to be heavy on the amenities, but in order to include as much floorspace as possible I added a second floor above the wall. Upon entering, we see a door to the main climbing area and a staircase to the upper deck, where the check-in desk will be. Space under the stairs can hold shoes and other storage, although this will necessarily be limited; behind the stairs is the bathroom. I'd like to note for the record here that I did include a fully-modeled sink and toilet, but didn't want to include a screenshot of just that. Oh well.

Entering through the main door we come onto the climbing floor. The climbing space is laid out in a fat L-shape, which as it turns out is hard to depict in screens. Inside the door we have a bulge wall with a 90-degree corner. One side of this corner is a 30 degree overhang, while the other is a 20. Originally, these were steeper, but they hung out into the rest of the room too far. The top of this wall is at three meters, and unfortunately working in a top-out was unfeasible (the check-in desk sits atop this segment).

This bulge adjoins the side wall of the gym, a vertical wall just over 3.5 meters in height. Nothing fancy here.

The side wall. You can see the bulge from the previous shot to the right. The side wall adjoins the back wall, which starts with another 20-degree overhang up to a short roof and flat finishing section. Were this wall ever to be built, it's possible that this wouldn't work, as climbers struggling for to stick holds on the finish might potentially swing out and fall off, potentially hitting the bulge or climbers on the bulge. But that's the joy of Fantasy Gyms!

Finally, the back wall. The 20-degree wall on the right of this shot is the same one as in the last shot, adjoining the side wall. The 20 degree transitions to a short vertical section and then into a 50/30 overhang. The vertical segment on the side of the steep overhang can be used for arete and side-reach moves, but mat coverage on this side isn't deep enough to allow for straight up climbing here (the door isn't very far from this bit). On the back wall, a support girder for the building structure is covered in a short sheath of plywood. This probably isn't much good for climbing, but is better than having an exposed metal girder. I can see some really godawful sit starts using this segment, as well.

Hopefully the layout of the wall is easy enough to visualize based on these shots. Here's an overhead of the climbing area:

The purple stuff is padding. The entrance to the climbing area is to the lower left. The bulge is in the center, with the overhangs of the back wall visible up top. Hey, there's that toilet I mentioned. Looking at it from this angle, the vertical segment of the big overhang might be climbable - the padding extends out about two meters. In a gym this size, every bit counts.

Last, here's the top deck. Stairs from the entryway lead up to the reception desk, which is the only really important thing up here. The rest of the top deck is simply there for relaxing and waiting; a walkway takes a climber over to the top of the big overhang, which is just large enough for a bench or a few seats. The reason I included all this is that the climbing floor is really too small for anybody who isn't actively climbing; if you aren't on the wall, you're in the way. The top deck was meant to alleviate this. It's not an ideal solution, but in a box this size it's probably the best you could do.

And, well, that's The Rock Box. I hope you enjoyed this exercise in theoretical bouldering gyms! Join us next time on Fantasy Gyms when we stick gyms in places they shouldn't go!

(I don't have any updates on my actual wall because I am currently installing 150+ T-Nuts on the 40-degree segment. I have to get this done before anything else can proceed because the damn thing is taking up nearly my entire kitchen and I don't want to store it until I've got the nuts in. The process is as exciting as it sounds.)