Mopping Up

Just a short post to spread the word that True North Climbing is closed until further notice (hopefully just for a few days) while we clean up after a sprinkler failure Friday evening.

We're using our Facebook page at http://facebook.com/truenorthclimbing as the primary way to get information out about the incident and our progress towards cleaning/drying the flooring so we can get things back to normal.

We apologize to our members and other customers for this disruption, and will get the gym fixed up and open again as quickly as we possibly can, but at the same time we will be careful to do things right.

Thanks to those who helped out last night, and to everyone for their support.

jg

Special Guest Technique Class Coming Soon!

Every Monday evening we offer a free Technique Lesson, aimed mainly at helping new climbers to build their climbing skills. It's also part of our efforts to build a fun community around the gym. The topics rotate somewhat regularly among the following:

• Hold Recognition
• Sequencing
• Foot work
• Heel hooking
• Bouldering Safety
• Dynamic Movement
• Flagging
• Crack Climbing
• Resting on a Route
• Slacklining

Starting on Monday, September 27th, we add a new topic to the mix. Dan Iaboni, owner of The Monkey Vault Parkour Gym, has agreed to join us every couple of months to give an introduction to Parkour. If you're not familiar with Parkour, it's a sort of urban gymnastics that has people doing amazing tricks and movements around and on obstacles that can be found in a city landscape. Dan has established the Monkey Vault to help people train safely indoors before trying anything too crazy outdoors.

Dan was here with some simple equipment last Friday to work out the logistics of the intro session. He has some simple things that even beginners can do to explore movement and get a bit of an idea of how to get started at Parkour. It should be a pretty fun session; don't miss it! Like every Monday Technique Lesson, it's free with membership or admission to the gym.

Recent Changes in the Gym

I thought it was time for a brief update on a few things we have done recently to respond to requests from customers and otherwise make a few small improvements to the gym:

• Large campus rungs: the small and medium rungs now have their big brothers to keep them company. Metolius finally got the large size rungs in stock, and Clint installed them today. These are the ones that regular people can actually hang onto!
• Locks for rent: by popular demand, we now rent out locks to use on the day lockers in the change rooms, for $1/day
• Chalk bags for rent: also by popular demand, instead of loaning out whatever chalk bags happen to be in the lost & found (without chalk), we now will rent you a chalk bag with a chalk ball in it for your use in the gym, for $2/day
• Chalk bags for sale: we got a bunch of Flashed Weave bags (made of hemp), for sale for $17 including HST.
• Adjustable dumbbells in the training area: a few weeks ago we added a pair of Bowflex adjustable dumbbells. These are adjustable from 5 pounds each up to 52.5 pounds. The adjustment mechanism is both really cool and a little fragile, so please be careful setting them back gently into their cradle. They have gotten jammed a few times, but Clint has gotten them working again each time.
  

The addition of chalk bags to our retail inventory is a good opportunity to let everyone know all the things we have for sale at the front desk. We have not done a great job of advertising what we have for sale, because we haven't yet figured out a good way to put it all on display, and other things have taken priority so far. We don't mean to keep all this a secret! In any event, we have the following items for sale:

Edible:

• pop, vitamin water, iced tea, Powerade, Simply juices: $2
• Odwalla fruit juices/smoothies: $3.50
• chocolate bars (Coffee Crisp, Kit Kat, Crunchie, Smarties): $1.50
  
• Clif bars: $2

Inedible:

• climbing tape: $3.50
• chalk balls: $5
• TNCI water bottles: $15
• Flashed Weave chalk bags: $17
• TNCI T shirts: $20
• bandaids: free!
  

All the above prices include the HST

REEL ROCK Film Tour is Coming To Toronto

A few times in recent years I have enjoyed attending the REEL ROCK Film Tour when it made a stop in Toronto. Films like King Lines, Progression and some of the Dosage series are classic climbing films that get me going each time I see them.

This season it is our honour to announce that True North Climbing will be hosting the tour. We have not yet chosen a date, but will probably close the gym early one Saturday night and then reopen for the screening under separate admission. We are waiting to see the full fall/winter schedule for competitions and other events of interest to the climbing community before pinning down the date. Let us know if you know of any other upcoming events that we should avoid conflict with!

In the meantime, you can check out the trailer for this year's films:

• On YouTube
• On Vimeo