B² Productions | Climbing Blog

It was a cloudy day in Boulder, Colorado. The clouds that had been threatening the previous day were still around. The decision was made for us – We’d head to the gym! Not just any gym though – The Spot. The place where big names like Daniel Woods and Alex Puccio regular crush the holds to dust. It was gonna be cool. Also, our fingers were wrecked. We were still suffering the after effects of Hueco Tanks, and pulling down on the tiny crimps and glassy, sharp pockets up at Flagstaff hadn’t really helped matters. The Spot offered nice, forgiving plastic. We had a bit of a lazy morning, before getting a late breakfast. Before we went climbing we decided to have a little bit of an explore round the town. Boulder proudly boasts the only flagship, dedicated PrAna store which was far too tempting to pass up, so we decided to make that our first destination. I was still on the hunt for shoes, so en route we swung into REI. Another disappointing selection of climbing apparel! We had a quick look round and then returned to plan A. We parked up near where we’d been the night before and wandered around the quiet, manicured streets of Boulder. Boulder had a really nice vibe, the sort of vibe which would be achieved if you injected a few hundred thousand pounds into the North Laines in Brighton. It was well scrubbed up and presentable, but still with an underlying streak of Bo-Ho chic. We found the store and wandered around, trying things on and generally feeling a little overwhelmed. I managed to find a T-shirt I’d seen online and subsequently fallen in love with. It’s been added to the collection. I also picked up a cool pair of lightweight climbing trousers. A pretty good haul I thought.

Once the shopping was done it was off to the Spot. We found the place without too much difficulty and it turned out to be not far from our hotel. After the general signing-your-life-away rigmarole, we were ready to go. We’d been in touch with Aaron from the day before, and he came down to meet us. The previous nights fun and games seemed to be wearing heavily on him though, and he was a lot more lethargic than the previous day. The Spot is a bouldering specific centre (with a few token top ropes thrown in for the kids), with a couple of cool, freestanding boulders in the centre. A long wall runs along the back which finishes up with a pretty high cave roof. There were holds all over the place, and it took a while to get our head around following the coloured tags from the holds instead of the colour if the holds themselves. I liked the Spot instantly. It was chilled, the staff were friendly and were playing good music, The problems were fun and they even had a slack line! However, my one huge gripe was the convoluted grading system. I don’t want this to turn into a grades rant, but seriously, there’s enough systems in the world to contend with without adding a new one into the mix – especially one that seems (to me at least) to make no real sense! For bouldering, I think America have got the best, most consistent system with the V grades. All crags in the states use this, and even the Castle has now moved primarily over to it from the British Technical. The Spot seem to have created their own which, possibly unsurprisingly enough, involves the use of spots with pluses and minuses, and a variety of initials to dictate the use of features etc. The ranges started at 3 spots for a V0/4A or B up five +’s with all kinds of variations in between. It really isn’t a big thing at all really. I’d like to reiterate that the problems were super fun, there was no problem there, it just struck me as odd to complicate things with a new system when a more reliable system is already in place and I’m sure used by all the staff whenever they head out to any of the great climbing spots around Boulder.

Benny on one of the freestanding boulders in The Spot Gym

All thoughts of weird grading systems was soon eclipsed by one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a climbing gym I’ve been to: Boulders you could top out on! It’s nearly impossible for me o go to any climbing gym and not compare it to The Castle – it’s my frame of reference, but The Castle could REALLY do with one of those boulders! Top outs are one of my weak points when I get on real rock, and it would be so cool to have some way to train for that! The Spot has exactly that! The boulders are featured, but not too heavily which is good, and they are also pretty high, which helped to over come some of the fear of topping out high off the ground. After working around some of the cool problems we saw on the back wall (not completing many due to fatique, but still having a good go) we moved onto one of the big boulders. We found a cool project straight off. I’d say it was around V4 or 5 (I have no idea what it was in Spots). It started by getting established on a couple of pretty good crimps, before making a big move up to jug. The next couple of moves felt totally impossible to begin with – A reach back to a high gastone with your left hand, then dropping your weight onto that arm, and catching a side pull underneath. Benny was pretty solid here from the start, but I kept popping straight off! Soon though, it started coming together. The key was a mix of body tension and footwork which took some figuring out. Projecting boulder problems is one of my favourite parts of climbing. It can be hugely frustrating too, but we were making regular progress so the excitement remained. Benny made the next big step – basically a backwards dyno to a big sloper with a little SOS on the top to catch! His feet swung right out and it took a lot of effort to hold it. I tried the section up to there and managed to make the move too – The next part was tricky though. We began linking up to the dyno from the start, but holding it took a huge amount of effort, and close as we came, we’d have probably needed another, fresher session to link through the last few moves to the top. We decided to leave that problem after working it for about half an hour. We didn’t move far though. Benny found a cool problem on the arete just to the right of where we had been. This was really fun too, but very different in style. From an easy sit start, you worked your way up, either side of the arete on slopers. It was super fun as well, and right up my street with a load of big, throwy moves between slopers. We didn’t manage to top this out either, sadly, but it was fun to work all the same.

After that we were pretty spent. We did a few easish problems to warm down and then made our way back to the hotel. By the time we’d chilled out, we couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere else. We decided to explore a bit more of what the Boulder Outlook Hotel had to offer. We donned our trunks and headed for the pool. The hotel had a cool leisure area in just off the lobby, with a pool, spa and most impressively of all – a climbable boulder! We didn’t really make the most of it though, as we were too busy splashing around in the worlds coldest pool! To balance it out though, they also had the worlds hottest spa. We alternated between the two until we couldn’t take any more and went back to shower, change and return for some dinner and beers in the bar, and the first of what would become a regular event, a pool marathon (my pool skills have certainly improved over the course of the trip, even if my climbing hasn’t…).