What is Gym Climbing?

Take me to the Stone Age Rock Gym - Climbing Rates/classes/hours of operation

Rain, snow, cold, bad winds - they can all make outside climbing miserable. As climbers began to strive for higher difficulty climbs, they realized that they needed to train, that the best training for climbing was climbing, and that conditions outdoors could prevent them from getting that training. The answer was to create artificial climbing walls, indoors.

The artificial climbing wall is a surface, usually of wood, sometimes, as at Stone Age, coated with the texture similar to that of real stone. The wall is drilled with numerous holes, sometimes in a grid pattern, and T-nuts are pounded into those holes from the back of the wall. T-nuts allow bolts to be screwed into them, and this is used to attach plastic, wood, and stone holds to the wall.

Wall structures are held up with strong wooden beams, much like the roof of a house.

Usually, gym walls are set up for toproping. Some gyms, like Stone Age, have special bolts and bolt hangers that allow leaders to use quickdraws to provide protection during an indoor lead.