By Tyson Schoene

I first met Yuval Hamburg in 2005 at a local competition in Portland, Oregon. At the time Yuval was the coach of the budding Portland Rock Gym climbing team. Soon after that Yuval left Portland and headed back home to Israel to start what would become Performance Rock gym.

After that first meeting I only had the opportunity to chat with Yuval a few more times before he went back home to Israel. So when Routesetter.com asked me to interview him about running a climbing gym in Israel I jumped at the chance to hear more of Yuval’s strong opinions.

Yuval tells us what life is like running a bouldering gym in Israel and why it’s not as scary as you might think.

Yuval, tell our readers where you are from and what business you are in.

YH: We are in the climbing business, operating as Performance Rock (Israel). We own a climbing shop and bouldering wall complex, it all sounds very grand but it is only on a small scale. We are the agents for Boreal shoes, the distributors for Prana Clothing and Metolius products, we also have a Climbing Wall consultancy.

That being said, what is it like dealing with the climbing gym business in Israel?

YH: Dealing with the business side of the gym is the easy part, although as a fledgling enterprise, we are extremely busy trying to build the business. The climbing politics however is a completely different story that has become a constant battle to move climbing forward into the twenty first century. Many of the climbing fraternity here are very supportive of what we are trying to do here, however there is the odd faction that is set dead against us. They use their considerable power to obstruct us in any way possible by fair means or foul.

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