Construction Update #3

Not quite as busy this week, with Eldorado off for a holiday break. But here's a stitched-together view of the frame for the north bouldering wall.


Some electrical work has been done, and the ventilation ducts continue to snake their way around the ceiling. The other work of note is the steel frame going up to support the floor of the men's locker room.


Next week: Eldorado's back and their crew should grow to 10 workers. Work continues on the locker room structure, HVAC and electrical/lighting. And our staff arrive to start their new jobs, so we will be very busy planning the operations side of the business.

Rendering #2: The North Tall Wall

Here's another image of what the finished walls will look like, to get you through the holiday season. This wall is opposite the bouldering wall, and rises to the low ceiling, about 25' high. It's slabby at the right end, and has a chimney tucked in behind the truss at centre. As usual you can click on the image to see it in more detail.

The True North Climbing Team

The initial recruiting effort is now complete, and we are excited to announce our senior staff for the gym.

Our Gym Manager will be Clint Searle. Clint brings years of experience as a climbing gym manager, along with a great attitude and maturity gained from also working in the "real world".

Our Head Instructor/Head Routesetter will be Dustin Curtis. Dustin is a member of the Canadian National Climbing Team, and very familiar to those who enjoy watching the finals at Tour de Bloc comps. He brings a wealth of experience from working in various capacities at 4 climbing gyms over the past 10 years, and an unmatched passion and energy for our industry.

You can read a little more about our senior staff here.

Together Clint and Dustin will provide the knowledge, experience and spirit needed to make True North Climbing an excellent and professionally-run facility. They will both start their new jobs in the new year. I am thrilled to have them both on the team!

John Gross
Owner, True North Climbing Inc.

Wondering What Our New Gym Will Look Like Inside?

OK, the renderings are now starting to come in from our wall designer Jason at Eldorado, so we can start sharing peeks at what things are going to look like. We have been ready to start sharing this info since the landlord granted approval for us to build what we have in mind (in particular the "special feature"). I wanted to wait until we had some good quality renderings though, rather then posting screen grabs from Google Sketchup. I expect to post these gradually as they come in over the next few days, exposing the gym one section at a time.

Up first: the North Bouldering area. This is all top-out bouldering terrain, running about 70 feet along the north wall of the space, turning at the north-east corner, and running down the east wall about 40 feet. At the far left end of this terrain the top deck is about 5 feet off the ground. It rises to about 9 feet where the kid who looks like a cub scout is standing, and then to 12 feet a little farther along. The wall rises above the deck in the advanced area, reaching 14 feet where the kid is hanging by one arm above the spotter. There will be a grip rail all along the top edge, to try to help avoid having the top-outs be the crux of the problem. There will be two down-climbs for this area, one at the far left end, and one at the far right end (near the woman with the ponytail). You can click on the image below to see a larger version.


This section represents most, but not all of the bouldering in the gym. There will be another section near the reception desk that will be 11 feet high (not top-out), running about 30 feet in length. And there will be a small free-standing boulder intended as easy bouldering for kids and beginners (and warm-ups for more advanced climbers).

Enjoy the view. More to come in the days ahead!

Construction Update #2

It has been a good week. The Eldorado crew is now on site, and they have gotten down to work quickly, organizing their equipment, coordinating with our general contractor, and starting to assemble the many steel "shapes" that will be assembled together to create the climbing terrain. I've posted a few new photos to the Picasa Building album. The initial crew of 3 from Boulder is being supplemented by local workers that they have already hired, so the crew should be twice that size by Monday! And all of the Eldorado guys (as well as at least some of the local crew) are climbers; they joined the gang I climb with Wednesday night at Toronto Climbing Academy.

On the general contracting side, the plumbing rough-ins are complete and concrete has been poured to restore the floor. HVAC work continues after a few bumps along the way. It is tricky figuring out how to place ventilation ducts and lighting between the climbing walls in a way that preserves safe clearance and also results in effective lighting, heating and cooling in the space.

Supporting the Ontario Access Coalition

There is an excellent interview with Adam Reeve of the Ontario Access Coalition now posted at the Ontario Climbing site: http://www.ontarioclimbing.com/News/News.html. It's a very clear explanation of what the OAC does, and why it's important for climbers to support their work. Give it a read, and think about joining the OAC. You can do so (and learn more about their work) at http://www.ontarioaccesscoalition.com/. You can also sign up at one of the Tour de Bloc comps, where the OAC is running membership drives, with prizes given out and raffled off to new members and current members who make a small donation. True North Climbing is a pround supporter of the Ontario Access Coalition.

Youth Comp at Climber's Rock

Yesterday's Elevation Under-20 Youth comp at Climber's Rock was a blast. I spent the morning as a volunteer belayer, wanting to help out and also learn about how these comps work. I had only been at bouldering comps before, so it was great to learn about both how a roped comp works, and to see the kids climb. I had a lot of fun, and am looking forward to having these running in our gym next year.

There were 7 routes to climb in a flash format (which means each competitor only got one chance to climb each route). The score was based on the top 3 climbs, with points awarded for progress from hold to hold on each climb. There were 50 climbers, ranging from the Under-11 (and some were well under 11!) to the 18/19 year olds.

I was belaying on climb D, right in the middle of the range of difficulty. As the comp got started, our climb saw some of the stronger climbers, for whom that climb was a warm-up. Later on we got the kids moving over after doing some of the easier climbs, and at the end we had some of the younger kids giving it a try. The older kids were leading, while the younger ones were on top rope, so they kept me pretty busy switching back & forth between the ropes & belay devices between climbers! It was intense! I felt a little pressure when belaying the lead climbers, because I wanted to make sure I fed slack quickly at every clip so as not to impede the progress of a climber and cause a technical to be called (and a few of them went up really quickly!). I think I did OK. There were lots of falls of course, which is different from my usual lead climbing sessions; two of them were pretty exciting, but no one got hurt at all.

I was very impressed by the calibre of the climbers, and by the spirit of the group. The parents were all well-behaved as well! There were large showings from Climber's Rock and Boulderz (snazzy shirts, Andrew!), and climbers from several other gyms, including at least one who came from Quebec for the comp. James and Maria Richardson did a great job hosting the event, Aaron Eden did a fine job as Head Routesetter, and Tim Vince and Jeff Whattam ran a tight ship as head judges.

We will definitely be joining the party by hosting youth comps once our gym is up and running. Seeing the excitement and talent of all those kids, from the tiny ones to the nearly grown-ups, was really inspiring and fun.

Construction Update #1

Work is underway at last! Here is what is going on so far:

• The slab floor has been cut for the plumbing. Guys are digging and pipes are being installed:
• The HVAC work is in progress, with ducts going up:
• The stairway to the upstairs offices has been rotated into its new position. This had to happen to get it out of the way of the entrance doors, which have now been installed. As of today, for the first time we have an enclosed space with doors that can be locked!
• The landlord has started replacing the clerestory windows. The first step in this process is removing the old windows and replacing them with gorgeous plywood sheeting. This does a good job of (temporarily) blocking the natural light. Even better, we have no lighting in the space right now, since the old lights have been taken down and our nice new ones have not yet been installed. We have work lighting to get us through this dark period.
• Eldorado's first truck arrived today and got unloaded. Here we see lots of bags of cement (for the wall texture), and the frames for the wall access doors (to get in behind the wall in a few places) on top. The initial Eldorado crew arrives on Monday to start putting stuff together!