Silverado Canyon lies just 15 minutes outside the urban chaos that is Orange County, California, but it feels a lot further. Surrounded by mature trees and a winding creek, Louie Anderson has built a home that gives him a welcome refuge from the bustle of So Cal. Yet this peaceful enclave belies the whirlwind of activity that follows possibly the busiest man in the climbing industry.

To give us an idea of “what it’s like being Louie Anderson”, Louie rattles off a list of his current tasks: Gym construction and wall design, shaping for eight climbing hold companies, teaching route setting clinics, mentoring young climbers, bolting new sport climbing areas, writing three guidebooks and authoring magazine articles for Urban Climber. It’s obvious that Louie is a man that is what he does.

This is all in addition to his “real” job as a Construction Superintendent for a Southern California General Contractor. He also manages to squeeze in quality time with his wife of 19 years, and do as much as he can with his two young girls (10 and 13 years old) “while they still let him”.

All this doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he seems to thrive in it. “I like to be busy. Some people burn the candle at both ends. I like to do that and then light the thing in the middle as well to see if I can keep from getting burned.”

Louie was kind enough to take a short respite from his work to give Routesetter.com a rare insight into his world and to answer a few questions about route setting, hold shaping and the state of modern wall design. The following is an excerpt from that interview:

OK Louie, how old are you?

40 years old.

How long have you been route setting?

I’ve had home walls as long as artificial holds have been around. Prior to that, myself and a few of my then partners had over a dozen local bridges and concrete tunnels that we had glued rocks onto in order to get our climbing fix in. These were really the first climbing gyms in So Cal, as many of them had bolted leads up to about 60 feet high.

Those glue-ups were probably my first experiences at setting and happened in the early to mid 80’s. The first local gyms opened around 1990 and I started setting in those prior to their opening for business. I guess I’ve been setting a long time.

What inspired you to write “The Art of Coursetting”, the only book on routesetting?

I can’t take all of the credit for this. When I first started shaping screw-ons for Scott Rennak and his company, Crater, he and I talked about comps and setting a lot. He and I talked about doing something like this [book] together for a few years and actually had plans to do so when Scott decided that he didn’t have the time to commit to the project. If you’ve read the book, then you would know that I didn’t let him off the hook altogether – He wrote the very informational section on competition organization.

Did you ever have second thoughts if the book would sell?

To be perfectly honest I didn’t care too much about whether or not the book was going to be successful. We both thought that there was a market for the book, but that it was probably pretty small. I really like to set and saw the need for some sort of organized resource for setting info. I don’t claim to be any kind of setting guru. I’m quite positive that there are a ton of guys out there that could set worlds better than I can, but none of them were stepping up to write anything.

The book that Scott and I had originally envisioned was going to be much more detailed and involved. Ultimately I just brushed on all of the major topics and left most of the finer points open to personal interpretation. I think “The Art of Coursesetting” did that pretty well. I’m happy to say that the book has been very well received and is selling better than I had imagined it would.

How long have you been shaping holds?

The first shaping I did was making clay holds and firing them so that we could use them on our glue-ups walls. After that came sand casting some holds that we made with cheap fiberglass resin. These also went on our glue-ups and were used in the first local gyms.

In about 1992 I did my first “real” shaping for Climb It holds. I did some replacement and fill-in shaping for Jim Karn’s “Training Series” and Mike Pont’s “Bloodline Series” and then did my own “Radioactive Series” (I know, lame names, we didn’t name our own sets).

Shortly after that there was a bunch of added shaping for Climb It and a now defunct company called Kokopelli holds. I then started doing a bunch of shaping for Voodoo and Stone Age. Then I got requests from some smaller companies (a few of which are now not so small) and it became a much more regular thing for me. I figure that to date about 3000 of my designs have been commercially produced.

You recently started shaping for So Ill, how did that happen?

I’ve actually been shaping for them for quite a while. Early on they were quieter about who they were working with. There are actually a few companies out there that I shape for that don’t list any shaping credits and prefer to keep that info secret.

As for how I started with Daniel and Dave [Chancellor], I’m not sure I remember. I think Daniel emailed me and asked if I would be willing to do some things for them. I could be wrong though. Now you’ve got me wondering.

Any new shapes we can look forward to seeing soon?

Currently I do just about all of the shaping for Climb-It and Voodoo, and do regular freelance shaping for 8 other companies.

I just finished a new line of shapes for Climb It and am trying to get them to let me do some bigger stuff and some super small stuff to complement that line.

But I’m sorry to say that I’ve been lagging a bit on getting some more new stuff to So Ill for their monthly subscription program (Soon Daniel! I promise).

Do you think being a setter helps when you’re shaping a climbing hold or visa versa?

I would say that being a setter helps my shaping more than shaping helps my setting. Many times I will shape something based on a specific need that I had while setting. Sometimes it’s for something that I didn’t feel was available on the market at the time and sometimes it’s to better something that I didn’t think was done well enough.

I guess the only real impact that my shaping has on my setting is that I will sometimes try to get into the shaper’s head when setting with someone else’s holds. I’ll try to figure out what other uses he may have envisioned other than the most obvious gripping position.

Being involved with both sides of this keeps me psyched though. I often times get to shape new holds and then set a climb with the first parts out of the molds.

Where do you get inspiration for your holds?

To be perfectly honest it doesn’t always come from the rock. The big feature called “Colossus” that I shaped for Stone Age was shaped to resemble a hillside that I drove by every day on my way out of the canyon where I live. We had a lot of rain that Spring and a huge chunk of the hillside slid away leaving this clean, dune-like feature. The day it happened I went home and made that shape.

The sources of inspiration are everywhere. I’ll see something at the crags, or on a boulder during a mountain bike ride, or on some beach cliffs halfway down into Baja California or, or, or…

Sometimes I’ll experiment with different carving tools just to see what kind of texture or pattern they will produce and this leads to a new look.

Do you find it hard not to copy other hold designs or do they help inspire you?

Yes, and yes.

Sometimes I see shapes carved by someone else and that inspires me to do something similar, or maybe leads me to produce a variation of what they did.

But I think honestly, it would be very difficult to directly copy someone else’s shapes without knowing what tools and techniques they used to create them. Even when I have tried to emulate someone else’s style in the past, my shapes rarely end up looking very similar.

There have been times where I have done similar styles for two different companies, but it has always been with both companies approval and they have usually been separated by at least a couple of years. The bottom line is that I like to do more shaping than any one company would ever do in a certain time frame. I don’t ever want to be limited to only shaping for one company. At the same time I take my relationships seriously and try to do my best to never piss any of my clients off.

What do you think of the state of modern climbing hold design?

First off, I’m glad to see more hold companies going to urethane as their base material. The holds end up being stronger, the edges don’t chip as easily and the texture on the holds feels better than other standard materials. It’s also much better for the environment and for the people actually making the holds.

As far as design, with all of the companies now in the market, we’ve got a hold variety to choose from that’s far broader than it’s ever been before. I think that as a whole, the typical hold designs are better than they have been in the past. We’re also seeing a lot of innovative visual styles being produced that cause the veteran companies and shapers to rethink what can be done. I would guess that in the next few years hold designs are going to get even more abstract, hopefully without sacrificing the usability of the holds themselves.

It’s fun to try to do things that are a bit on the crazy side visually, but that still climb well. I did the new So Ill feature called “The Zit”, and it turned out pretty fun to climb on and definitely looks different.

And wall design?

The overall quality of most commercial gyms seems to be getting better as well. Steel framed structures allow for much broader design options and I think that as more wall builders commit to using steel that we are going to continue to see more impressive shapes and terrain in new gyms. I’m glad to see that gym owners are starting to care less about cramming as much wall square footage into a space as possible and are instead focusing on the quality of the terrain being built.

The gyms being built now are much more open and less claustrophobic than the older facilities. There is also a greater amount of space on average dedicated to steeper terrain than there used to be. We are also seeing larger bouldering areas and many of these bouldering areas now feature large sections that allow for top out bouldering. This better equips gym climbers for the transition to outdoor bouldering. The average bouldering height in gyms is slowly growing as well. While the standard used to be 12 foot tall boulders (less after the floor padding is installed), I now routinely build 14-15 foot tall boulders. It may not seem like much of a difference, but it allows for an additional move of vertical climbing and with the better floor systems being installed these days is not much more dangerous, if at all. All in all the facilities being built these days are far superior to the older gyms.

You’ve been designing and building climbing structures and gyms since the early 90’s. (Most of the gyms in So Cal and the Bay Area are projects that Louie worked on). You’re also known as one of the most prolific wall designers in the country. What are you currently working on?

For the last few years I’ve been trying to learn more about sculpting and carving concrete to look more like real rock. I also try to stain my structures to look more realistic. I’m starting to get better at it and I hope to do much more of this on future projects.
Most recently I finished a new gym in Ventura, California called Vertical Heaven. I’ll be starting a new gym in Bakersfield, California next month and am in the final planning stages of a cool city park project that will feature a series of sculpted boulders of varying sizes. There are also two full-size gyms on the books for later in the year.

In the last few years I’ve done a lot of high-end private structures and gyms. It’s really amazing to see what people are willing to do and many times these have big budgets that have allowed me to do things that aren’t feasible with normal gym projects.

The last one of these I did was a 7000 square foot outdoor lead structure on a private estate. I can’t tell you where it is, but it’s a 3-sided, 40-foot tall structure. The main terrain feature is a cave that is 65 feet wide, 40 feet tall and 56 feet deep. It’s easily the biggest and steepest artificial cave I’ve ever seen. My customer on that project rented a few scissor lifts and hired a bunch of talented local setters to come in and put up the structure’s many routes. When you drive up to this monster it’s like going to a crag. Maybe someday I’ll be able to share photos of this thing (or it might turn up somewhere in a magazine), but until then trust me – it’s amazing!

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Anyone that wants to get in touch to talk shaping, wall design, gym construction or whatever should feel free to contact me via email at laassoc@cox.net. I’m always psyched to talk shop and we might even end up working together on something. Also, a big pat on the back to Routesetter.com and anyone else involved with the site. I’m glad to see something like this online and expect that it will become a great resource for the setting and indoor climbing industries.

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