There are some simulated-rock climbable surfaces (other than by bolting plastic holds to a wall) in New Jersey. At the new Gravity Vault climbing gym in Chatham, including ...

Flaring chimney: Classic bent-knee chimney technique -- a bit more entertaining + strenuous with the flare. Sometimes obstructed by plastic holds from other routes - (unlike serious traditional Gunks climbers, seems like indoor NJ climbers aren't much interested in chimney technique).

Wide stemming chimney, slightly inverted: Creative move needed to get onto the first plastic hold about 15 feet up (as currently set on the red-tape route). And a frictiony step to exit. (The creative stemming move could have been set up by shaping the surface, instead of using a plastic hold, but that would have given up the flexibility of setting different creative moves later on).

Crack: It might be thought easy to simulate a crack by bolting two wood beams on the side of a house. Gravity Vault has done better in three ways:
(1) made the inside surfaces something like abrasive granite, which enables me to more easily climb it using a secret trick that is difficult to explain to Gunks climbers. I call it "jamming". (tape your hands for the abrasion, or I use those rubber-backed gloves I bought at Rock & Snow).
(2) put subtle variations in the width of the crack as you go up.
(3) the top 15 feet are overhanging. Yes, an overhanging fist crack, in New Jersey.

(I have no idea if it's intended to re-create some famous abrasive-granite crack out West somewhere)

But we're in Gunks country, so of course it had to happen: A couple of weeks ago I watched somebody layback it (until he got to the final overhanging section).

Also you have the option of changing the difficulty by which selection of plastic holds outside the crack you use for your feet. Or no outside holds, just pure foot-jams the whole way up.

Ken

never taped my hands for the crack there. if you know how to jam it's 5.8

Thanks for the hint about climbing it with bare hands. I guess I've been babying my skin too much.
(I've also been averse to climbing more at Powerlinez / Ramapo Torne valley)

But maybe I'll put off that kind of practice until a few weeks before I finally manage to successfully make a trip to JTree.

It's hard to motivate for climbing that crack bare-handed, when I'm one of the tiny percentage at Gravity Vault who can climb it at all.

Ken

P.S. an interesting social experiment is to ask random customers at Gravity Vault if they've ever climbed at the Gunks.

Of course I'd be happy to hear about other simulated rock in NJ. Though really I'm more interested in exploring (and cleaning) real natural rock in NJ (and eastern PA) - with some warm days coming up - (but that's another topic).

Munich, Germany: Thalkirchen DAV climbing center is often said to be the largest collection of artificial climbing in the world. In addition to lots of bolted plastic, they've also done lots with simulated rock.

Four generations (at least) of simulated rock in one place, spanning decades of construction and climbing. The first generation, rendered in concrete, is so authentic that is has substantial horizontal ledges. The day I tried leading a route on it, holds were a bit wet from recent rain, and reaching up to the 4th bolt I was thinking that if I slipped while making the clip I might break my ankle. Authenticity - (not carried forward into further generations).

Second generation also in concrete, more subtle patterns of holds. They had even worked out a clever + simple way to have two different routes on the same line with different difficulty levels (and no colored holds or tape). Must-do classic for connoisseurs of concrete face climbs is "Losing Hank". Around the corner is a steep slab with moves reminescent of classic 5.8 face climbs in the Trapps.

Note that you have to bring your own quickdraws to do the non-overhanging outdoor routes at Thalkirchen. They do rent a climbing ropes for leading. Also there are no top-ropes set up anywhere at Thalkirchen. The only way a rope gets thru the top anchor of a route is if somebody leads something up to that anchor.

Third generation they switched to a different material (some sort of resin? which can be molded), and put the simulated rock indoors. Sometimes they also create an easier route up the same bolt line by attaching plastic holds to the simulated rock. So you have the choice of doing the harder route by avoiding the plastic. And sometimes a third even harder route by the same trick as for concrete.

Fourth generation uses material pretty similar to the Third, but perhaps more complicated designs -- like some routes intended to resemble the Frankenjura, and some interesting crack routes I didn't get time to lead. And they built another bigger building to house the simulated rock (along with lots of bolted-plastic routes).

I'm more impressed with this latest generation. One of my Munich partners says the footholds are getting polished (Authenticity!) Sometimes the hand-holds feel contrived (like I can sort of visualize how someone molded the resin) and doing the route seems like feeling around to find the place where they molded the resin ... to be pretty much the same shape as some plastic hold. (but really how different is that from some face climbing in the Gunks, reaching up for yet another boring horizontal).
I feel they could have made the footwork more subtle -- but that invites criticism from both sides.

What are some other places with interesting simulated rock?

Ken

it's all hands for me no fist jams but i have big paws. i even down climbed it. there are cracks in the gunks and the climbers i know all know how to climb crack w/out hand jammies. gym climbers that visit the gunks on the other hand...

Offwidth gym crack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQ9Gr9wmsU

Godawful musical accompaniment to that.

Why spare your ears? Every other part of you is suffering in OW.

I also have been to the DAV Thalkirchen facility. They spent millions on it. there is one word for it - stupendous. in addition to all that some of the overhanging or steep routes are adjustable for steepness with hydraulics! the bouldering area is huge of course. the floor under the overhanging bouldering slopes up, so the routes are really long and you don't fall far no matter how 'high' you are.

Amazing - I didn't know about that.


I didn't do those at Thalkirchen, but the gym an hour away at Rosenheim has a long severely overhanging bouldering "ramp" which makes two 180-degree turns. When are they going to have that in New Paltz?

simulated rock:
A feature of some of the plastic-holds routes at Thalkirchen (also the two Espace Vertical gyms around Grenoble France, but not Rosenheim or Traunstein) is a "structured" surface with a variety of slopy angles in various shapes -- which can be used as intermediate footholds for to help less-tall climbers lunge for deadpoints on harder routes.

New Jersey comparing:
I find that the many of the routes at the Gravity Vault gyms in NJ are more interesting than many of the routes at Thalkirchen (and other Euro gyms). My theory is the main reason is because indoor routes designed for Leading tend to have fewer interesting climbing moves, because well-designed Lead routes take thought to providing clipping stances (for bolts whose position on the indoor wall is pre-fixed).

Also I find that some of the Top-Rope routes at the NJ Gravity Vault gyms are more interesting for me to Lead because often thought has not been taken for clipping stances. (Like one of the lime-tape routes at Upper Saddle River two weeks ago where hanging on with one hand to make the clip on the 2nd bolt is much more difficult than next move up past the bolt. In fact both Karl + I backed off there, and I decided to just TR it instead)

Ken

Thanks - I never would have guessed. And that also works for me as a "technique" video, because there's good light to see what's happening inside the crack. (Never tried the two-fist method.)

If they had an indoor off-width around NY-NJ-eastPA, I'd practice it.

outdoors: I specifically got on Baby P1 to practice off-width, but was disappointed that the relevant section was so short.
What should I try instead?

Ken

yup-only one move of OW on Baby - a single arm bar.


Go where there's granite. Cathedral Ledge in NH is a good start if you can't get to Yosemite.

Have you been on it, RG? I have not, but looks like about halfway up it narrows to solid leg/knee size, so it should be fairly trivial levittation from there up. But the beginning looks wide - too wide for a knee to be secure. Really surprised it's 5.9 - that's a terrible size for me. Maybe I need to work out my footwork better on that size.

GO

It looks about the same as the OW at the top of Sacherer Cracker, though maybe longer. That section is only valley 5.9 (the 10a rating is because of the short fingers section lower). I once watched a guy whip repeatedly, maybe 5 or 6 times, from close to the top of that. Once he even had the rail in both hands and was too gassed to pull over. It was pretty entertaining.

Sacherer

Gabe, I've never been to a rock gym in California. The start looks like classic armbar heel-toe offwidth (no knee locks and too wide for leavittation).

The climber seems to be very good at flexing the inside-foot ankle and getting rubber on the rock with the inside foot. But some of the time he appears to be kind of reaching up with his armbars, which in my experience just creates next-day shoulder pain (you can't pull up on an armbar, the outer foot heel-toe has to propel you upward, so the armbar should stay at shoulder level).

If such things are pure (as the gym crack is intentionally), the difficulty is at least somewhat related to how long they are. If people are using a route as sandbagged as the Sacher Cracker as the standard for 5.9, well then...it is really 5.10 IMHO.