Tag Archives: Climbing Gym

Apr28

A breather in Bulgaria – Walltopia

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Sunday, 31-August-2025



“Seriously? Walltopia is based in Bulgaria? It was FOUNDED in Bulgaria?”
– Ben, upon hearing that the company that build his favorite climbing gyms around the world was started in Bulgaria.

It wasn’t something I’d expected to ever hear, and it wasn’t a place I ever expected to make a pilgrimage to… but the idea of visiting the showroom for the company that’s made almost all of my favorite climbing gyms did start to grow on me quickly.

Walltopia is a manufacturing company that makes wall panels, holds, HVAC, and then slathers textures pseudo-rock on top of it all. They make climbing gyms, and I owe them a huge amount of gratitude for the quality of the gyms I’ve been to.

And, interestingly, down the street from where Andrea’s family has an apartment in Sofia, Walltopia has their showcase gym. A spot where they can invite people to climb while showing off all the new technology that they’re working on.

We, of course, tested it all out, and had an absolute blast doing so.



Mar5

A trip to Leuven – Working out at a cathedral climbing gym

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Friday, 18-April-2025


Our last day in Belgium was unscheduled – we had the whole day to ourselves. Some people made some plans, but I had my own goals for the day… ages back, I’d read about a cathedral in Brussels that had been converted into a climbing gym. I hadn’t had a chance to check it out while I was there in 2024, and so now was the time to make it happen.

I packed my climbing gear into a pack, hopped on a train, and zoomed off on my own lovely little solo adventure.


After a week of classes, negotiations, and socializing, this was heaven for me. Calm, quiet, and blissfully solo. I kept to my own schedule, rented a scooter, and blasted my way around town until I found myself climbing tall routes under beautiful stained glass.

Then, I grabbed a quick snack, and did it all again – scooting my way to the train station, then catching a ride back to Leuven in time to meet the class and get the bus to the airport.

Yeah… I do enjoy planning and executing my own adventures.


(A quick link to a news story about the gym: https://www.brusselstimes.com/1566631/hidden-belgium-climbing-space-in-church)



Jun20

The first climbing competition in years – Movement Friction Series 2023

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Saturday, 06-May-2023

I competed in a climbing competition!

Seriously! I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve been to a climbing comp… there’ve been a few here in Portland, since COVID, but… for one reason or another none of them quite worked out. And, let’s be clear here, when I say “a few”, I mean “one or two”, at least as far as I can remember, so… we’re not talking about a weekly occurrence here.

When I found out that there’d be a comp at my home gym? Well! Excitement abounded.



I… uhh… don’t really know where to go from here, with writing about the comp.

I mean, it was fun, right? All climbing competitions are excellent – they’re a chance for the gym to show off its stuff, for the route-setters to step up their game a bit, and go above and beyond the usual type of routes. For competitions, the climbs are almost always special in some way – the route-setters use non-standard holds, they add more “terrain features”, if you will, and they add a bit of style and panache to the gym for a few weeks.

It’s awesome, and fun, but at the end of the day it’s a bit hard to describe in a blog…

Instead, I’ll focus on how amazing it felt to compete again.

Yeah, the gym was absolutely packed full. And yeah, we ended up waiting in lines a bit longer than I’d normally be patient for. And sure, if I’d had more time to climb I could have placed higher (Ed Note: Ben actually projected it out, and if he’d arrived at the beginning of the competition, he could have tied for first in his division. Yeah, seriously.) but… at the end, I had a blast.

I felt strong. I felt good, and I felt like I’ve made some real progress in the past few years. Sure, I’ve gotten stronger… but more importantly, I’ve started regrowing into myself – restarting those parts of me that I’d powered down in the past.

I felt strong, I climbed strong… and I was strong. Both mentally and physically.