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General Climbing Discussion

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Why are the gyms focussing on toprope? 31-Jan-2008 At 12:44:23 PM garbie

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The story here at Sydney Indoor:

we have around 70 routes you can lead (out of approx 250 routes total). About 40 of those 70 you can toprope if you want. The others are on the steep walls & roofs where the TRs are impractical, and on sections we've left free for leading only.

So there's the first reason for leading in gyms - getting onto terrain you just can't toprope.

But we cater for all tastes. 95% of our customers either can't, don't or won't lead, so we have around 100 TR's for them. But the other 5% are important to us for other reasons than $, they're the climbers, they're the kids practicing for comps, they're the newby leaders who do a little course we run and then practice before venturing out.

So in a nutshell, in Oz you can't have a business catering for just lead climbers (maybe you can in Europe), but you cut down on the fun in the business if you ignore the niches, the lead climbers, the boulderers, etc. It would be a bit vanilla without them.