By Chris Danielson

Out in the hot, outskirts of LA, in Upland, California – a massive warehouse holds a climbing gym which has built a strong reputation over the past decade as a fun place to climb and stiff place to train.

It looks like but actually is not an airplane hangar – it is in fact a former Sunkist packaging plant built in the 1930s. With a steep bouldering cave and strong boys like Garrett Gregor and Kyle Owen pushing the limits as they grew up on the plastic.

Hangar has always been a climber’s gym – a great place for a community of climbers battling to get strong. But for Zach Shields, owner of Hangar 18 (and owner of well-known So Cal hold brand Climb-It), one Hangar wasn’t enough – he wanted to go bigger.

Enter Louie… A few years back, Zach began toying with the idea of a second gym and in 2006 started searching in earnest for a good site. He found a great location in Riverside in spring of 2007 and began working with long-time compatriot – SoCal bolter, hold shaper, coursesetter, gym builder and all-around good guy - Louie Anderson, to actualize a second gym.

Coincidentally, Louie had actually been involved with the commercial construction of the facility itself, and soon found himself tasked with filling in the interior of the big square building – with more wood and steel – this time doing something a bit more exciting with the raw materials.

The idea behind the gym was not simply to build one more climbing gym in the territory. In Zach’s own words: “I wanted to open a full scale climbing gym that catered to all levels of climbers. I wanted lots of bouldering, lots of lead, and lots of top-pa rop-a.* With Louie’s design we were able to separate the kids groups and the climbers by having the top rope area and the lead climbing/steep bouldering on opposite ends of the gym. We didn’t want to cram as much square footage as possible and make it feel cramped and claustrophobic, we wanted a wide open airy feel.”

And, well… with 20 foot high slabbing top-outs and two feet of foam to land on – you definitely get a wide open airy feel. Go Big.

Go Simple.

In the past 15 years, I’ve visited, climbed at, helped build, or set routes on walls of all shapes, sizes, and texture types. I’m always curious how wall designs come together, and seeing the changes in design over the years.

In California alone, there are dozens of facilities, ranging from the low-lying steeps of most early 90’s lead walls in Southern California, to the newer generation of 45 foot + tall climbing and fitness gyms in the Bay area. In all of these places, what always stands out as the best overall feature of good design is - simplicity.

And in the case of Hangar 18, Zach took advantage of a route setter’s perspective on the climbing terrain. In reference to the general design question, Louie says, “I’m a huge fan of big open planes and more subtle angle transitions. It’s my opinion that this type of terrain climbs better and provides the least limitations for the route setters. When doing the initial design work on a facility I climb (in my mind) every potential line in the gym. If it doesn’t make sense from a setting and climbing standpoint - it gets changed.”

Zach’s concepts for the gym were relatively basic as well. “As far as the climbing, we wanted clean wide open planes with as little stemming as possible. The top out terrain is real similar to topping out on real rock, they are gradually sloped back and will get your blood pumping.”

On this particular project, Louie had some specific, but still simple goals, above and beyond the route setter’s perspective, reflecting the knowledge of someone who has had a hand in building most of the climbing facilities in the state of California:

“One of my biggest wishes was to separate the instructional and birthday party areas from the rest of the gym as much as possible. This space was ideal for that as it had an alcove area on one end of the building that was large enough for 22 top rope stations.

I positioned the boulder between this alcove and the rest of the gym to act as a supranational separation barrier and loaded the easier bouldering angles on the alcove end of the boulder. This effectively segregates the party and instructional groups and allows the regular and higher level gym users the ability to escape what can often become a chaotic environment in which to train and socialize.

I think a lot of the comfort and enjoyment of a space comes from an open and airy atmosphere. I could have designed much more wall space for this building, but from the beginning I wanted a nice, open feeling with the space. When you can succeed in this kind of approach, the gym usually feels more inviting, it can handle more people without feeling crowded, and the individual climbing structures seem much larger due to their prominence in the space.”

The gym incorporates simplistic wall designs, but also very efficient use of space for a range of climbing options. The top-rope areas vary from slab to slight overhangs, with two cracks, and the lead climbing is expansive, with slight to steep overhangs throughout. The top-out areas of the bouldering all entail a quick railing-hop to the large mezzanine, followed by a walk down the interior mezzanine stairwell, which exits towards the front of the gym.

Finished Product

In line with the simplistic concepts – color and general aesthetics are important as well. Zach wanted the wall colors to resemble some well-known crags, and Louie started with two basic base colors, and then incorporated simple streaking colorations into the walls to make them stand out.

In addition, the Hangar 18 crew uses hold color-based routesetting, only using tape as a way to distinguish between boulder problems of the same color in a densely packed bouldering area. This is common in many So Cal gyms, and while there is a legitimate and interesting argument in the setting community about whether color-based routesetting is the way to go to maximize both efficiency and creativity, it was clear that the basic idea at Hangar 18 – to keep it simple for the customer – is appealing.

In reference to color-based setting, Zach also noted: “I think it looks really clean and it’s easy to follow. We do a lot of setting by color and style and we do use tape if colors cross or anything gets confusing. The downside is that you need a large back stock of holds. It helps having Climb-It Holds next door to the Upland Hangar. Tyler (Zach’s brother and urethane master pourer) can custom pour anything we need and have hot new holds to us in about an hour.”

On the color-setting topic there will likely remain a good bit of healthy debate, at Hangar 18 and at gyms around the country. But leaving that aside, what remains clear about this new gym is that it reflects a lot of the advantages of thinking big, and thinking simple, when it comes to climbing walls.

These guys started from a broad set of defined goals – clean planes, open and well-divided spaces, bold lines and features – and worked to actualize them. The resulting finished product is superb.

Extended to route setting itself, the same concepts can apply. Most people in a commercial gym atmosphere will appreciate the simplest, boldest routes – the routes that jump out at you when you’re walking around, and that climb fluidly and creatively without being overly complicated.

In the same way the feel of open floor space amidst big walls creates a comfortable atmosphere on the gym floor, aesthetic and flowing routes in modest grades, simply dispersed over the most appealing terrain will often make the biggest impression on climbers.

*”Top-pa Rop-pa” is an inside joke among the H18 crew, a few among them in particular, who either speak Japanese or like to act like it… yelling the phrase at high decibels with a Japanese accent. Ask So Cal strong man Joe Morgan if he’d like to do some easy climbing with you, and he might respond loudly, and repetitively, with the words…Top-Pa Rop-PA!… Just don’t blame me if you keep hearing it all night long.

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