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| - True north climbing is exactly that. It's up north, I actually think it's the closest gym north of the 401 (which is co-incidently perfect for me). If you're downtown, you have a plethora of climbing gyms to choose from but I guess you were kinda limited to the number of gyms up north... until now.
Upon entering the gym, the first thing you'll see is a giant stalactite hanging from the ceiling. And true to it's name, it isn't touching the floor at all. Personally I think it's kinda gimmicky, but it is marvel to see and go up at least once or twice. Be aware when leading on it though cause you can ninja drop kick someone next to you if you fall and swing to the side (boo... that would suck).
The gym is about 40-ish feat high I'm guessing (I may be off by a bit) and has features from slab, to overhangs to caves. Perfect for a little bit of this and that. Oh, and throw in a stalactite as well and you've got the whole cake.
Most of the routes in the gym are roped and are equipped with non-fixed gri-gris (I really hate the ones that are fixed to the ground). There's also a kid's area with auto-belayers that they use for kids parties and classes (which is nice cause it's away from everything).
The bouldering area is able to be topped out from corner to corner, but the best part about it is that they have moulded Asana mats that fit to the whole area. No ankle breaking gaps! Yay! Top that with a gym floor that can also take some impact force and you've got yourself a pretty safe landing if you bail out from the top (trust me... I've done it before and it sucks).
Now the crippling part of almost every gym comes in two flavours. One... they don't change up the holds very often and leave up routes forever; not the case for this gym as problems and routes are reset every couple weeks or so (more often from bouldering problems). Two... they don't clean their holds; again, not the case as we're constantly spoiled by new holds and often see the staff in the "laundry room" with grip cleaner (hence the industrial non-hand-melting gloves). Oh and I forgot secret flavour number 3... The gym is actually clean! Ever go to a gym with chalk everywhere or smells of shoe everywhere? Ya... Febreeze doesn't fix everything.
Now every gym has got it's downfalls or rather things they can improve on. I'd like to see more sustained roofs (or more intense for that matter). Actually if we're dreaming I'd love to see a crap load more free-standing boulders while they're at it =). Another thing that I notice every once and a while is that the tape in the bouldering cave gets kinda confusing (ie. blue tape problems that end up intersecting with blue tape problems...).
After all that the most important part of a gym is it's culture and community. I think that the people at the gym are pretty cool. No one is really too busy or "good" to offer help, talk to or even to climb with. It's a pretty friendly place with a good formula for success. There's even free programs like yoga, technique classes and mental training they run to help you on your way to be the next pro climber.
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