Hey everyone, I make these selvedge chalk bags, and with everything that has been coming to light, it’s important now more than ever to show solidarity with women and hold each other accountable.

Recently, I’ve had some brave friends find courage to speak on their experiences and it really has inspired me to help be an agent of change.

If there’s one thing I hate more than these horrid acts against innocent people, it’s seeing people turn a blind eye and allow these things to continue without consequence. I know making chalk bags won’t change the world, but I want to use my work to contribute in whatever way I can. I’m donating 25% of proceeds from all website sales from these bags to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest, National Network) to support survivors of sexual violence. If you climb and happen to need a chalk bag, I’d really appreciate the support. More importantly, please continue to listen to survivors, stand up for one another, and hold people accountable. I know it’s against the rules to self promote businesses, but even if you don’t purchase anything from me I highly recommend you consider donating to RAINN or any similar organizations as well. If you’re interested, here’s my site: ilahace.myshopify.com

i’m a first time climber, does anyone have any tips for me to get better?

I saw this move in several comps and started seeing in the gym around V6-V7 dyno boulders

I would like to learn it but could not find the name nor any videos about it or teaching it

Does anyone know the name and how to learn it? I tried today and got almost there, but I feel that I’m missing some technique

Kinda rough since this is just the second climb I've gotten on Moonboard, but I was psyched to send it (and drill it to refine the moves in the future).

hiya looking for people to come to with to bouldering gyms or active activities in vancouver bc and the surrounding areas (new west, burnaby, coquitlam, surrey, vancouver), just started a few weeks ago and want to find people who are looking to go once or maybe twice a week or do other active things like pickleball, trying tennis, trying basketball, volleyball, badminton, trying running etc.

still learning on V2s and V3s and have tried the occasional easy V4 so anyone in the range would be great so we can work on them together (:

I go to Hive Van, Hive Surrey, Progression or Approach

age, gender, etc. doesn’t matter - just looking for bouldering buddies ❤️ im in my twenties, if you send me your instagrams, numbers or discords i can shoot over a message.

I've bouldered about 5 times now, 1-2 times a week. Not a lot of time on the wall, but still would like to progress in this. I have seen some small gains - my last session I was able to complete a route I was unable to, and half a route as well (but failed due to grip endurance).

Wondering what I can do on rest days and what sort of equipment I can make on my own. I figure I can just use the top edge of my doorway casing to start with - but I would like to eventually get a pull up bar and maybe a proper fingerboard (watched a YT interview with Keith Baar that hints at the idea of 8-hour training intervals). I keep getting inundated by ADs for a particular setup and while tempting I'd like to see what I can make myself.

Update: Thanks for all the replies! From the responses, I’m going to mostly stick to what I’ve been doing - boulder once or twice a week - and maybe add some light upper body exercises (nothing too strenuous) to just improve my upper body a bit.

I was tidying up my drawings and I found this boulder I made about a year ago.

So first off, my gym doesn't use traditional grading, they just label their routes based on rough difficulty, 1 through 8. But we do use an app where climbers can log their sends and vote on a difficulty (font scale) to land on a consensus grade, to introduce comparability.

At least that's the idea, but the people who mainly use the app are absolute sandbagging dickheads. Every single route in the "Gym-5" difficulty gets labeled as a 6A by them. Sometimes 5+, but never higher. NEVER. After all, if they (usually 7C+ or better climbers) did it so easily, how could it be harder than that? Sandbagging pieces of crap.

For the longest time, I believed those grades - they were consensus grades of way more experienced climbers after all, so they had to be reasonably precise. That caused me to believe I was weak, I made zero progress, I was stuck on 6A for about a god damn year, that any harder climbs feel literally impossible to even hold or move on. It was massively frustrating and hindered some psych and motivation to go climbing.

Now, after spending more time with the Moonboard (2019 masters, 40°), I slowly but surely realized that I had been mislead by these van dwelling rats.

Most of the "Gym-5" climbs that I can't figure out are way harder than most 6A+ benchmarks. WHICH ARE ALREADY KNOWN TO BE MASSIVELY SANDBAGGED. So now I'm about to be able to send 6A+/6B problems on the moonboard, which would apparently be graded 6B+-ish in other gyms (based on what I read online), while I can't even climb some "5+" routes, if I were to believe these Patagonia wearing critters.

And small hold finger strength and tension are even my weaknesses, so it's definitely not a style advantage. FUCKING HELL these guys have indirectly caused so many nights of frustration for me. Get lost, Fontainebleau is just a 4 hour drive from here, DO NOT COME BACK.

Rant over. I'm delighted to learn that I'm probably stronger than I was lead to believe.

Started bouldering to distract myself from a breakup, and I’ve only been four times so far, but honestly, it’s been making me feel so good. I’ve already made so many friends there, and I absolutely love the community. I never realised how friendly and welcoming everyone would be. 🫶

Hi, I started climbing a few months ago and recently my fingertips have been getting hard/tough to the touch. My first thought was to sand them down but it feels like it only makes it worse and more glassy. It's not really like a normal callus, the top layer of the skin is hard but underneath it's still soft and sometimes it hurts when I press down on the fingertips. I have pretty dry skin so I've been trying to moisturize it which does seem to help a bit. Does anyone know what it is and what I can do about it?

I started climbing for the first time ever last month, I go 1-4 days a week and am really enjoying it, but I don’t really know what I’m doing so I’m hoping to get some advice! My questions :

1) Chalk? My gym provides shoes and chalk. The shoes are slippery but seeing as I’m a complete noob I’m not concerned right now, and will probably wait a generous amount of time before buying my own. The gym chalk is in socks and only lightly coats my hands, and I also have wait for others to finish using it. I’m not sure how coated my hands are supposed to be but, in general, is it worth buying my own?

2) how to deal with torn up hands? I ripped a few calluses my first time, which are now healed. Since then I trim my calluses with a nail clipper, but some recent openings stayed pink for about 5 days despite Neosporin and bandaids, I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or if it just takes that long. I climbed again today and the ones I already had were pretty fine, but new ones opened up so easily. I know this is just part of climbing but if there is anything I can do to mitigate it I would love to know

3) How should I limit myself? When I exercise I find it hard to stop myself before I’m forced to stop from exhaustion. Like for climbing, I climb until I can't grip or hold anything anymore. Right now I go whenever I'm free for 2-3 hrs but both me and my responsibilities would probably benefit from having a clearer idea of what days I plan on going and for how long. For a beginner, how many sessions per week, how much rest between them, and how long per session would people advise? Also, when climbing, what are signs I should stop?

4) how should I view progression ? I only climb V3 right now but is it fine to try harder grades as I’d like and sort of brute force progression, or is that a bad idea ? What are realistic goals, or should I skip goals entirely? I don’t really like the idea of “training” or being very deliberate in my sessions, like right now I just wanna go climb, but of course part of me also wants to improve so I’m not sure how to balance that.

I know this is a lot, and I definitely do not expect everything to get answered. Just wanted to share the things I’m thinking about as someone who is just starting and see if anyone has any advice!

Bouldering Project gyms

I've seen lots of freak injuries in my time, both in real life and on social media. Everything from broken fingers and wrists, to knee ligament tears to bones straight up snapping.

I’ve long felt that bouldering is the most dangerous thing I do on a regular basis. Yet I feel like most people don’t take the danger seriously and just think oh it’s not that high and there are nice crash mats all around what could go wrong? I just feel like so many of us are one bad fall away from possibly never climbing again. Or at the very least, not climbing for a damn long time - which logically also means your work and daily life is going to be affected.

I'm not afraid of falling (which makes me more afraid of myself), I want to continue this activity but there's a growing sense of 'its a matter of time before this sport takes something from me', and it could be small or big but it's gonna take it. I come from a wrestling/grappling background so I know how to break fall after getting high amplitude slammed onto the mat in a variety of ways. But still, there's so many factors that could just ruin your day, so many positions to fall from and fall into, it's not always possible to orchestrate the perfect break fall. I do a lot of cross training to strengthen my ligaments, tendons and bones (particularly the legs) to mitigate this. But I can't shake the nagging feeling that it’s inevitable.

I also feel like there’s a lot of people that are just doing stupid shit in the gym like walking under people climbing without any awareness and lying down on mats.

Anyways, what do you guys do to stay safe? I've actually started doing some break fall drills before and after each session. I have started to self-assess my performance in a climb not just on how I sent the climb but also how I got off it safely.

Sorry it’s kind of a long edit, but I had to convey a bit of my own personal pain 😭.

This was many sessions of struggle learning the beginning sequence, (I’m actually skipping a pocket hold on the back of the first red volume) to literally 25-30 slips off the final hold, only to DAB TWICE ON MY FIRST SEND. Ran it back, got the W…which is important because the climb gets taken down TOMORROW. So proud of myself for suffering through the defeat

Hi everyone! I am researching climbing gyms as a third place. If you're unfamiliar with the term, sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined it in 1989 to describe a social space where you can unwind and build community. A third place is separate from your first and second places, home and work, respectively. If you have the time, please fill out this form and share it with other climbers!

https://forms.gle/eRPZFbSyZobLbwrM6

This is an add-on that me and my friend made, all volumes are on and all feet are on. Yes ik the angle blocks two of the holds, but they're both insignificant slope-y jugs. what do yall think the grade is specifically for this beta?

Would have done this one again, but I didn't notice the video was bombed until I got home 😅

My daughter and I started climbing a new gym a few months ago. We like it but as you would expect we aren't great but we have made some progress into the "intermediate" routes (V4-5) as per the gym's grades. I bought some La Sportiva Tarantulace shoes and have worn through the toe already (probably a result of poor footwork, overweight and poorly sized shoe rather the shoe's fault). I like them but also would prefer to not burn through another pair in three months. Anyone have any suggestions for beginner/intermediate shoes that are particularly strong in the toe? thanks in advance