Of all the places where a person may take off their shirt, coat themselves in chalk and flail around in a harness, a climbing gym is one of the more socially acceptable.
Although rock climbing is rightly associated with the outdoors, indoor climbing has become much more popular in recent years. And, as climbing is likely to become an Olympic sport in 2020, you're probably going to hear a lot more about it in the near future. Indoor gyms have also become especially popular in climates such as Canada's, which force hands squarely into mitts half the year. In Toronto alone, there are five high-quality indoor facilities, including True North Climbing, which just opened its doors last month.
We showed up at True North on a Monday night to try it out. After getting over the feeling that we were standing in an airport (we were, sort of), we found a well-designed - if still under-populated - gym.
Downsview Park is already home to myriad sports facilities, including basketball courts and soccer fields, all housed in a former hangar. Now it also boasts one of the coolest-looking climbing gyms in the province, if not the country, with 14,000 square feet of walls and a unique terrain that includes the largest indoor-climbing stalactite in North America.
There are generally two types of climbing at indoor gyms: The kind where you're tied in to a rope, and the kind where you're not. It's the sheer variety of climbs - especially roped climbs - that make True North worth the trek if you live downtown. Enthusiasts can opt for slabs (where the wall leans away from you), overhangs (where the wall leans toward you) or cracks (where you climb a narrow vertical equivalent of those rips in the ground you always see in bad earthquake movies). Beginners can choose from plenty of top-rope climbs - the climber tends to fall only a few inches before the rope catches - as well as lead-climbing, which is more advanced and usually results in longer falls (without hitting the ground). In addition to walls for climbing, the gym has a training area and a pair of slacklines - thin sheets of fabric similar to tightropes on which you're supposed to balance.
Bouldering, the kind of climbing that involves no ropes, essentially entails traversing a wall or climbing up no more than about seven metres, with only soft pads on the ground for protection. If you've never done it before it may sound dangerous but, mostly, it isn't. In fact, beginners will find they have little to be afraid of. The staff took plenty of time to teach the basics of belaying, and most of the bouldering areas, where advanced climbers tend to congregate, were a safe distance from everything else.
True North has one of the better bouldering areas in the city, thanks to a long top-out section - topping out means climbing onto the roof of a structure, instead of just dropping to the ground when you're done (the gym offers discounts for those who just want to boulder, something every gym should do). There's also a relatively small freestanding boulder that has the feel of a real rock, and although climbing the same boulder over and over gets old quickly, it adds a bit of personality to the space, and kids will have a blast playing on it. There still aren't nearly enough holds on the bouldering walls, but the staff promise that more are on the way.
By far the most impressive part of the gym is the huge plywood-over-steel stalactite dropping down from the ceiling. It hangs just a few feet from the ground, allowing the gym's staff to set climbing routes that start on its underside and work their way up and around the structure.
Conspicuously absent from all this was the usual horde of chalk-covered, hard-core climbers that normally occupy many climbing gyms. The atmosphere here was decidedly low-key and friendly. Staff members occasionally joined climbers to goof off on the slacklines, or tightropes. Even if you walk into the gym not knowing a thing about climbing, you'll probably have a good time. Eventually, the horde will arrive, but True North seems to have enough space and variety to make both beginners and sandpaper-skinned veterans happy.
True North Climbing, Downsview Park Sports Centre, 75 Carl Hall Rd. Four stars out of five. A day pass at True North will run you $17. Monthly and annual memberships cost $50 and $520 respectively.