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| - My friend and I had climbed together in Nashville almost two years ago, so when both of us happened to be in Pittsburgh, we decided to check out ASCEND. The entrance to the building is somewhat hard to find, but they do have ample free parking available. Upon entering the gym, I was immediately impressed with the cleanliness of the facilities, and the staff does an excellent job giving newcomers a detailed orientation to the space. The main room is huge with big windows that have a great view of the city. In this room, there are the rock walls, cardio equipment and weight equipment. While I do wish that the training equipment was in a separate room (especially the weights as I sometimes felt like I was climbing directly over them), the equipment was clean and good quality.
As for the walls themselves: there is a TON of bouldering (including one wall that you can climb on top of- which was just fun!). There are definitely not as many top rope options, and I was a bit disappointed in how short the top rope walls were in comparison to other gyms I have visited. That being said, I still found more than enough routes to suit my ability! Several of the routes are auto belay, which is really great because in order to be trained on the 'regular' belay (assuming you haven't learned it before), you have to pay to come to their nightly class at 7 pm. I do wish that ASCEND would make this information more clear OR give another option for those that can't make that 7:00 time. So, be aware!
I look forward to a second visit to ASCEND in the future.
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