Inspiration Behind the Climbing Wall Discovery Site

I got into climbing a few years back. The interest essentially sparked from nowhere, after accidentally stumbling upon and binge watching the entirety of Magnus Midtbø's ninja warrior youtube series, I was intrigued by the total ridiculousness of his strength in a sport that he had barely spent 5 minutes training for (Ninja Warrior that is). It turns out climbers are stupid strong, and as a long time casual lifter, that very much piqued my interest. Even more so considering that Magnus also had a very well rounded physique for a natural athlete, which got me thinking if climbing could/should be incorporated into a lifting routine to either increase overall upper body strength, reduce chance of injury by developing weaknesses & improving mobility/cardio, or simply just to mix things up and make the routine a bit more fun.

A friend brought us along to one of their climbing sessions in Awesome Walls Stockport, where I got to experience what those plastic holds felt like for the first time. It turns out that not as much "gym" strength carries through into climbing as I'd thought would, at least not without the knowledge of proper technique and development of any reasonable finger strength. I had a great time nonetheless, and after a few weeks of recovery, I went climbing again. This time, we visited Depot Climbing Manchester, and I was blown away. Stunned by how different the experience one to the previous gym I went to. That's not an insult on Awesome Walls, btw, because both gyms provided a totally unique experience. Depot was absolutely huge, with hundreds upon hundreds of different climbs spread across a handful of different size and shaped rooms & walls. Every room I came across brought me more excitement as it opened my eyes to just how many levels there are to this sport and how high the quality of the facilities provided by these climbing companies are.

Then I found the cherry on top: A fully kitted out gym, in the final room of depot. My immediate first thought was "right thats it, I'm quitting the gym now", and that's literally what I did, which at the time was a local PureGym. Who needs a normal gym membership when you can have unlimited access to a flipping climbing mansion with a gym within it!?

Life story aside, how is this relevant to BestClimbingWalls.com? The takeaway from my story is that each and every climbing wall / gym / centre out there can provide a completely unique experience in all aspects; from the size, shapes, angles & number of the climbing walls, to the types of holds they use, the styles of climbing they facilitate, the atmosphere / vibe, the classes, the equipment, the amenities, etc. It felt like a shame to me that there wasn't a means of actually simply browsing through these wonderful establishments, at least not without doing a very specific direct google search. Enter Best Climbing Walls, where we make that dream a reality on the pursuit to building the biggest and most expansive climbing wall database to exist, and more importantly, provide a nice simple user experience that allows you to find those new climbing experiences by filtering on what matters most to you.

If you're not sure where to start, just visit our homepage and you'll see some recommendations right out the bat. You can use the navigation bar at the top to explore walls by location, amenities and other interesting preferences, or just head over to the main climbing wall directory and start applying filters. The site may prompt you for your location, that just means we can find the walls nearest to where you are currently browsing from and provide distance information on the listings. That's entirely optional though, the site should be fully functional without that information if that's not for you!