The 10 Essentials of Gym Climbing
"Since so many modern climbers rarely leave the gym, I think the classic list of 10 essential survival items could use an update."
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I began mountaineering with a family friend in the Cascades, Washington, back in the early 1980s at age 12. Until then, my only exposure to the mountains had been family hikes around New Mexico, and since I was a whiny, hapless, bowl-cut, velour-shirts-and-Keds little pissant, my parents carried everything and gave me snacks, water, and sunblock as soon as I started complaining (which was often). However, my mentor in Washington, Bob, wasn’t shy about schooling me in how to be a climber.
“We need to bring the 10 Essentials, Matt,” he told me before our first proper outing, up The Castle, a low-fifth-class peak facing Mount Rainier. “You don’t want to get caught without them.”
“What are those?” I asked.
“Good question,” he said, jamming a bunch of heavy crap in my backpack.
The 10 Essentials, it turned out, comprised a list of mountain-travel items developed by The Mountaineers, dating back to the club’s climbing courses in the 1930s, and included such obviously essential wilderness items as extra food, extra water, map and compass, and so on. This timeless list remains as relevant as it did a century ago, but since most modern “climbers” never leave the gym—or, at least, this is what all the low-effort gym-bouldering content on YouTube is telling me—I think it could use an update.
Here, then, are 10 essential items that are sure to save your life (or at least enhance your reputation) at the MegaCrimp Sending, Yoga & Toning
chain.
Tripod
Apparently, you’re supposed to film gym boulders, since Instagram’s recipe for “fascinating content” seems to involve people bouncing around on bright plastic blobs like kids swimming in the e coli-infested ball pit at the McDonald’s PlayPlace. For a while, you had to bring your own tripod or put your phone in your shoe, but now gyms are leaving tripods out. Sadly, these seem to get more use than the communal brushes. Pro tip: If you brush the holds first, you’ll get better content!
Loud smartphone timer
Because how else are other climbers to realize that you’re doing three seconds on, seven seconds off, calibrated-force repeaters using the 10mm monodoigts in the wooden blocks attached to the lat-pulldown machine unless your phone is going off constantly to remind them just who the real alpha is in the weight room?
Wireless earbuds
Nothing says, “Don’t talk to me—I’m serious about my climbing,” like wireless earbuds, which give the appearance of focused intensity even if you’re not really that focused because you’re also trying to pay attention to a training podcast at 2x speed so you can “absorb the info faster” while you pretend to onsight the bouldering set that’s already been up for a month. If someone starts chatting with you, take one earbud out, give them the side eye, and say, “Good to see you—let’s catch up later,” in a flat tone implying that you actually mean “neither in this lifetime nor the next.”
Gym-climbing app
Some gyms have jumped on the annoying bandwagon of not initially rating new routes but instead making you download some goober app to see which grades other climbers have given, forcing you to scan a QR code at the base like some pencil-necked loser. Well, I already have enough apps on my phone (most for boring dad tasks like panicking over my empty bank account and having thermostat wars with my wife) and I don’t need another, especially one that forces me to watch videos of morons gym climbing just to get the goddamned grade. But that’s where we’ve come to. Want to know what you’re climbing? You need an app.
Pretentious snacks
Those Goldfish and Go-Gurts were OK back at sleepaway camp, but they aren’t going to cut it in the modern rock gym. You need pricey, pretentious snacks that telegraph wealth and sophistication. You need snacks that reflect your status as a careful consumer who doesn’t eat meat except on even months, when you intermittently go keto. You need things like unpronounceable nuts hand-harvested from llama dung on the Altiplano, or seaweed covered in Asian chili powder so spicy it makes your vision blur. Do not offer these snacks to your gym friends—you paid $5 per calorie for these!
Chalk pot
I used to boulder at the gym with a chalk bag, basically out of sheer old-school orneriness. But when my friend James pointed out that, each time I fell and rolled on the mats, I was spilling half my chalk, I wised up and got a chalk pot. The only drawback is that your chronic “chalk leeches” will zoom in the instant they see you crack your pot open with a “Hey, there—mind if I fill my bag? I’m fresh out.” As a distraction, offer them that 300,000 Scoville Heat Unit weird-ass seaweed shit you were snacking on; they’ll never mooch your chalk again.
Personal fragrance
It still boggles my mind that climbers—we historically unwashed heathens—would care about appearances. But apparently, rock gyms are good places to meet other singles, which means slathering on personal fragrance. At one gym where I climb, there is a woman who routinely wears so much fragrance that it literally sticks to the autobelay lanyards. I’ve come home from the gym a few times smelling like her, which has provoked raised-eyebrow questions from the wife. (“Honey, this woman’s perfume was all over the autobelays—I swear!”).
Hair product
I’m very much a get-in-and-GTFO guy when it comes to gym bathrooms, with their fungal floors, exotic germs, and untoward noises and smells. But the modern-day climber concerned about their vibe has been known to primp and preen before the gym mirror. To reduce time spent in the dirty bathroom worshiping that Greek god/goddess in the looking glass, get styled up before you hit the gym; just don’t try so hard while climbing that you sweat, or all that gel and hairspray will grease up your T-zone.
T-shirt that says “Setter” or “Staff”
Never mind that you’re not a route setter or a staff member—it only matters that people think you are. Get a few T-shirts with the words “Setter” or “Staff” silkscreened on them, and you’ll find that you have all sorts of power. Not only can you boss other climbers around and criticize their belaying methods for lulz because you hate their idiot face, you can wrench holds into positions that better fit your body, and beta-splain with total impunity because, well, for all they know you set that problem. I mean, who are the customers going to complain to—the staff? You’re the captain now.
Drone
Because the next frontier in YouTube content is clearly epic, uncut drone footie of “Pink Holds in the Corner.” Just don’t fly your drone into anyone’s face and chop their nose off—that might get you kicked out of the gym for life!
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Matt Samet is a freelance writer and editor based in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of the Climbing Dictionary and the memoir Death Grip.
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