BENTONVILLE, Ark. — On this week’s Adventure Arkansas, 5NEWS Meteorologist Michelle Trotter shows us how you and your family can enjoy Climb Bentonville, no matter if you are beginner or an advanced climber!
With over 20,000 square feet of climbing space and climbing walls that are 50 feet high – Climb Bentonville is a unique place – it's a rock climbing facility that offers yoga and fitness classes.
“We are a climbing gym first, but we do have a great community backing it, just coming from different climbing communities this is easily just a big family”
Keegan Lewis is the hiring manager at Climb Bentonville and says they opened this gym in 2019 in hopes of getting more people to fall in love with climbing.
“Climbing is actually a big sport in Arkansas outdoor wise, if you look behind you, we have that map of all the outdoor regions that we can climb, indoor climbing hasn’t been very streamlined here in Arkansas, they just thought this would be a great place because there is a lot of outdoor climbing places and we do want to streamline the indoor climbing industry.”
The facility includes a workout room, yoga space, and much more. Upstairs there is a 3,000 square feet of climbing zone fore kids only, along with a party room for private events. If you are a beginner or an advanced climber, they have different routes catered to you and are there to help you learn.
“We give every new climber to our facility an orientation just to make sure they feel comfortable feeling our equipment in the gym, because for some people this is scary, there is 50 feet of climbing, you want to know what you are doing.”
They offer two different types of climbing -- bouldering and sports climbing.
“Sports climbing consists of anything with ropes, we have top ropes and led climbing here. Led climbing is the one with metal climbs behind me, that is where we clip our robe in through checkpoints over time. Top roping is where we have a preset robe, that one is more beginner friendly, then bouldering is more strength based, no ropes, you will be falling directly on to the mat on bouldering, rather than just top rope where you are going to be falling on a rope.”
Each climbing route has a sign next to it that gives a brief description on what you can expect while climbing that route and how challenging it will be.
And rarely the routes will be the same...
“Every weekday we switch up our routes, you’ll see dates on those tags. Every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you’ll see new rope routes, Tuesdays are our boulders day. With bouldering we do around 8 routes, we have two route setters right now, they are on the ones that cook up all the routes or teach lessons throughout the routes, super helpful for beginners who are just now learning to climb, they like to teach lessons throughout.”
Plus-- all kids are welcome!
“There is no age restriction on our walls, they would just have to be 25lbs for all of our ropes to lower them. For our bouldering area, it is 13 and older just because we do have people falling directly onto the mat.”
“This is just a great place for beginners, don’t let climbing scare you, it’s not only physical but it’s also mental, it’s just a good sport to get you up and moving, rather than just working out in a gym.”