They’re Coming Out of the Walls to Get Toehold in Climbing

It’s another Friday afternoon, and in a musty, muggy upstairs corner of the YMCA gymnasium in downtown Long Beach, Shawn Diamond is climbing the walls.

Again.

Diamond, 14, is small for his age, standing 4 feet 9 in his funny-looking climbing shoes, but he’s a pretty big guy in what he calls “a second home.”

Diamond says he spends 40 hours a week at the Rock Gym, which for him is basically a 10,000-square foot jungle gym, the largest and at 30 feet the tallest of only a handful of indoor climbing facilities in Southern California.

And his skills are evident as he makes his way slowly and carefully, adeptly and artfully up one challenging route after another, scaling undulating artificial rock faces with footholds and handholds no larger than golf balls.

“Shawn is our top young climber,” says Jessica Cummis, owner of the Rock. “He’s been climbing a year now and he’s already in that elite level, making climbs that most climbers will never reach in their career.”

Having completed one such climb, a shirtless Diamond, wearing shorts and a cotton cap to keep the sweat out of his eyes, walks over to a table by the window, takes a seat in front of a large fan, waves across the room to another young climber and explains his reasons for spending his afternoons in a steamy gym climbing fake rocks while his classmates are running amok in their playgrounds and parks.

“What do I like the most?” Diamond says, pondering the question. “Making friends. You make a lot of friends and have a good laugh while you’re [climbing]. And just hanging out and sitting on the bean-bag chairs, kicking back and drinking Cokes . . . that’s what I like.”

And so he goes, leaving his Coke behind, to another wall, choosing his route, blocking out everything else, scaling a vertical face, like some sort of giant bug, higher and higher.

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The Rock Gym is not a glamorous place. Its large glass windows do not open and act as solar heaters when the sun shines through, which is every afternoon.

It does not have its own restrooms or showers (members must share locker-room facilities with YMCA customers downstairs). A jogging track surrounds the textured climbing walls and the basketball court immediately next door creates a noisy echo chamber whenever a game is in progress.

But all of this, some customers say, is part of the charm of a maze of a climbing center that features more than 20 rock faces and more than 100 routes--from beginner to advanced--that make the Rock Gym, despite its urban location, one of the most popular climbing areas around.

“There is all-year [outdoor] climbing in the Los Angeles area, which is a great thing,” Cummis says, “but the average climb area is over 90 miles away, so without gyms people can’t really excel at the sport.”

The Rock is celebrating, without fanfare, its one-year anniversary this week and business is booming. Individual membership--at $450 a year--has grown to more than 300. Walk-in business--at $15 per day--is brisk, and personalized training and special events such as birthday parties, corporate team-building outings and singles-oriented gatherings are scheduled throughout the year.

“It’s a great business because from a marketing standpoint the possibilities are endless,” Cummis says. “It’s a great activity for everybody. We can’t think of any reason anybody shouldn’t climb. We have deaf climbers. We have older ladies who climb because it’s a weight-bearing exercise, and that’s the No. 1 thing you need to fight osteoporosis [loss of bone mass].

“We have two women who climb two days a week. One swims in the morning and climbs in the afternoon. The other one does aerobics and climbs. They both have a dual workout, and they both can’t believe how much stronger they’ve gotten since they’ve come here.

“Both find weight-training tedious, and that’s what most people find about climbing. Here you’ve got chess on a wall. You’ve got to figure it out, you have to think the whole time, you’ve got to plan and set goals, and sometimes you have to really work at it to get it, and in the process you’re not necessarily realizing how much you are working because it’s the challenge you’re thinking about, not the workout.”

One look at any of the regulars and it becomes clearly evident that climbing does wonders for the body.

The routes are marked by colored tape, each color designating the level of difficulty. If a particular route is marked by yellow tape, for example, the climber can grab and step on only holds with yellow tape.

There is little danger of injury from falling; each climber is belayed (secured by a suspension harness and rope) by another climber on the ground, so if the climber falls, he or she can be lowered safely.

Beginner climbs feature large and easily accessible footholds and handholds situated fairly close together. Advanced climbs feature routes with smaller holds spaced farther apart, often on walls that include overhangs. Getting up an advanced route requires not only strength, but a great deal of concentration.

“It’s really a mental discipline,” says Brandt Nestor, 27, a Seal Beach resident who climbs as a hobby while studying to be a commercial diver. “It’s visualization. You’ve got to visualize yourself doing it. There are a lot of barriers to get through, and once you get through the barriers and you know you can do it, it becomes easy. It’s like tai chi, very fluid.”

Indoor climbing gyms began to spring up about 10 years ago. While there are fewer than a dozen in Southern California, there are about 300 around the country. And they are credited with introducing new participants to the sport and with contributing to an increase in climbing standards of difficulty.

“Gyms enable you to get over the fear factor very easily,” says Glenn Hays, 29, a guitar-strumming, motorcycle-racing, roller hockey-playing sky diver who apparently has very little fear. “When you go outside for the first time, it can be scary as hell. But [after learning in] the gym, you already know the moves, that falling off isn’t going to kill you. You go climbing for the first time and you’ve never been in a gym? You’re not going to do anything outside.”

Diamond belongs to a club of young climbers called Team Rock. They compete occasionally indoors but make fairly regular trips to outdoor sport-climbing areas such as Williamson in the Angeles National Forest, and Joshua Tree.

Chris Putman is their coach and works with her team every Friday afternoon.

Diamond is her top climber, able to negotiate routes that his teammates can only dream of someday negotiating.

But Putman says competition is only part of what her team is about. It’s also about character building and individuals working with each other and within themselves to focus and strive for better results, which gives them a sense of achievement.

It seems to be working.

“I really like it, I can’t explain why,” says Derek Bloomstadt, 12, a Team Rock member from Long Beach. “It’s like . . . when I have a good climb I feel real good, like I accomplished something.”

Chris Bates, 10, also of Long Beach, was introduced to climbing in a gym while with the Boy Scouts. He now is one of Team Rock’s better climbers and says that despite the many safety precautions he takes, he scales his rocks--real or fake--with mixed blessings from his parents.

“I really like to climb because it’s a good sport to build up your muscles and it helps a lot with other sports,” he says. “My dad, he really encourages me. My mom, she doesn’t really want me to do it because she’s afraid of me falling.”