What is Bouldering
Bouldering is free climbing on a wall without the aid of ropes
The sport of bouldering initially started as a way for climbers and mountaineers to practice the difficult moves outdoors in a more controlled environment. As the sport progressed over the years it’s grown into a full fledged sport of it’s own and has a diverse community of climbers from all over that enjoy it.
Getting started is more affordable than general rope climbing.
All that’s needed to jump on the wall is a pair of shoes and some climbing chalk. Most gyms that you would visit will have those available for rentals as well so all you really need is a willingness to learn!
The shoes are specialized with a particular rubber that allows for maximum grip on the wall while the chalk assists in drying out your hands so you wont slip off the holds. We’ll go into more detail about the different kinds of shoes and chalk in another article.
The grading system used is the V-scale and can be found in gyms worldwide.
This scale ranges from V0 all the way to V17 in ascending difficulty. When you’re first starting you’ll primarily be in the V0 to V2 territory but with consistent practice you’ll jump up to V5-V6 within a couple months. This grade system helps give the climbers a rough idea for what to expect before jumping on the route.
Here at Flux we opted to use a different system altogether because we believe people get to caught up in the act of “Grade chasing” and it distorts their idea about what they can and can’t do on the wall. We use three different grades here that go from A to C and this forces the climber to assess the climb and form their own idea about how difficult they believe the climb is.