Gym Climber Behaviors and Attitudes: A Look at the Data

But the real shift was in their intent to climb outdoors in 2019, I think it was just over 90% of people had some interest in climbing outdoors eventually. And I think that 70% of people said that they tended to start climbing outdoors within the next year. In the latest report, we had a 38% of people say they had no intention of starting to climb outdoors at all, and only 20% of people said that they intended to start climbing outdoors in the next 12 months. So it was a really, really big shift. You're listening to the American Alpine Club podcast, your guide to the climbing community. What percent of climbers think they always observe safety practices versus actually do? What are the unique risks for indoor climbers? Are climbers even interested in training, and is the training equipment climbers use reflective of what the climbing media loves to yap about? Has who climbers are, the demographic makeup of climbing changed much in the last 7 years? Do indoor climbers even want to climb outside? What are the most popular disciplines of the sport, both indoors and outdoors? Some of the answers will surprise you. AAC partnered with the Climbing Wall Association to help get their 2026 survey out to as many climbers as possible to collect data about climbers who use climbing gyms. Their behavior is an interest. In this episode, we sat down with Garnet Moore, the Executive Director of the Climbing Wall Association, and chatted about the survey, the report that came out of it, and some of the biggest takeaways from the data. Each nugget we discuss poses a question. What assumptions do we all make about the climbing community that are actually incorrect? I'm your host, Hannah Provo, here's a data. Hi Garnet, welcome to the AAC podcast. I'm super excited to talk to you today because we're going to talk about a bunch of interesting data that the CWA just collected about who the indoor climbing community is, their preferences, and that kind of thing, and our audience loves data. When we talk about accidents data and accidents trends, they're very like they jump on that. I think this is going to be a really interesting conversation because up until the CWA started doing this a couple years ago, and other organizations have started doing it too, but data trends and mapping the climbing community is a relatively new thing. We're still trying to figure out who the climbing community is, who they are as indoor climbers, as outdoor climbers, what that connection is. I'm really excited to see if this kind of confirms a lot of climbers' instincts about who's a climber. Are they all engineers? That kind of thing, or does it tell us something different, and I know it's going to be challenging to necessarily draw a causation or exact lessons from this, but I think it'll let us ask some interesting questions. Let's just start with, can you introduce yourself? What is the CWA for those who don't know? What's the organization's purpose, and then what is your role there? First, I do want to confirm, climbers love data. I don't know for all engineers, but sometimes it feels like I get to see a lot of other types of businesses come in and interact with the, at least the indoor climbing industry, and constantly they're shocked by how much data and information people want, so maybe it says something about our sport. We're probably one of the few sports where you have to have at least a basic level understanding of physics and forces, so maybe that goes hand in hand. My name is Garnamore, I'm executive director of the Climbing Wall Association, and what the Climbing Wall Association does is it say, well, it's a nonprofit that supports the needs of the indoor climbing wall industry, so predominantly that's commercial climbing gyms that we all love and climate, but also help support university climbing walls and architects, anything, and really anything with an artificial climbing wall for the sport of climbing. So we focus pretty narrowly on the sport of climbing. What we do to support gyms is write standards, so we have standards that are referenced globally for the operations, design, and engineering, and route setting for high operations inside of climbing gyms, so we basically bring the entire community together and help create advice and guidelines for climbing gyms to either climb as well as to use. Yeah, and then some of my roles, the executive director, were really small organizations. They got three full-time employees, a nice big board of directors that help them, and an army of volunteers across our various committees that come from our member base, and are basically all just bunch of climbers trying to figure out what the future of this pretty new sport looks like. Yeah, absolutely, so what's your personal connection to climbing, I'm assuming you're a climber? Yeah, I would like to say that climbing all my life, I think everybody starts out climbing and just some people are unlucky enough to stop. So I've been climbing, I'd say, more or less seriously, for like, a little bit over 20 years now, and I've been working in the climbing industry, outdoor industry, and then more specifically climbing industry for pretty much that whole time. Yeah, let's say there's a style or type of climbing, but I don't like, I just love touching cool holds. That's my favorite thing, so yeah, wherever there's fun sandstone or cars, especially, some cool holds, and then do a lot of ski mountaineering and other fun activities outside too. Awesome. Okay, so then today we're mostly focusing on the CWA survey. Can you tell us about what that survey is, how it works, and what's this significance? Yeah, well, I think in the intro, yeah, you called out correctly that there's just isn't a lot of data that exists about the sport of climbing, and it's a big part of our mission to continue to provide more and do more research around climbing. So I think one of the things I probably failed to mention when by little recap of the CWA's areas of work is research data reporting. So yeah, we cover reports anything from like financial benchmarks for climb gyms to the indoor climber survey, which is studying the demographics and behavior of the people who actually use the climbing walls. And that was a project that was started in 2019, that was the first indoor climber survey that was conducted. That was in partnership actually with AAC, CWA, and a few other organizations, as was this latest edition. And we really want to get a handle on who's coming into gyms, where there's acute opportunities to develop the sport in one way or another, and then also acute areas to focus on for risk management, mentorship, or other type of guidance we can provide, so the climbers are showing up into climbing gyms and being supported to be their best selves to make the best judgments that they can as climbers. Yeah, so like primarily this is a tool that gyms can buy the data for and then help inform their own decision making about how they're running their business. Yep, yeah, exactly. We also see really have usage for say gear manufacturers looking to see my might even inform potentially like colorways that you see on climbing gear, because they can see the breakdown of different demographics or regions that are more or less interested in different types of climbing. Yeah, really see the data get used in a broad way. I was also really excited in this latest version. We had an optional risk behavior risk management specific survey, so for anyone who's listening to fill that out, thank you so much for that data is so important. And that continues some risk management research that we've been working on in partnership with a researcher in Canada for a number of years now. Yeah, that sounds super interesting. I think understanding like the risk tolerance and behaviors of climbers would just be so illuminating. Yeah. Yeah. Well, happy to answer. Yeah. What I can, what I can about that today. Did you has not end up publishing that information or did I just not find it? So it's a slightly separate body of data is how we're treating it from the core indoor climber survey, the indoor climber survey is really focused on this demographic habit and experiential aspects of the indoor climbing population. The risk management research, we had our first published report in 2023 and that was coupling a survey with actually going out and observing climbers in the wild and seeing how their answers to the survey matched up with their actual performance in climbing gyms around the Southwest. And what we'll do is with this latest risk management research survey is coupled out with the data that we had from our 2023 survey and then published that as a separate focused report on climber risk behavior and attitudes towards risk. Awesome. Very exciting. Yeah. If you want the quick TLDR for our attitude as climbers towards risk is that we all think we're doing the best job in the world and everyone else sucks and the reality is we all could do a little bit better. That's funny. So there's a certain level of confidence that I'm managing risk the right way. Yeah, I don't give you an example that you all can reflect on who's listening in your own head. You can ask someone a question like how often do you do a partner check before starting to climb? And I'm sure in our own heads, we're like, oh yeah, every time, right, like maybe before a little honest, we'll say like, oh, not if it's a certain situation or someone I really trust or it's the second pitch on a climb and we're just already all set up. But the reality is when we go and observe those people. So in our survey, we had about 85% of people said partner check 100% every time. [BLANK_AUDIO] in reality, we observed a little bit over 50 percent, like it was like 55 percent of people actually doing that and we were pretty loose in what we counted our observational partner check to be. It was basically just, did you even like look down at what was going on or around you? Wow, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I think maybe, you know, if we were to bring in like the AACs accident analysis, I think like complacency as a human factor has been a big theme recently that we were discovering. Yeah, very much so. I think complacency gets a really like top billing in discussions about risk and injuries and climbing. One area, we've got kind of a long list of possible causations that were that were evaluating. But I think a Dunning Kruger effect just overconfidence is a big one. And then my punch is probably one of the strongest ones. And this is where I think inter-climbing actually has a little bit more of an acute risk paired outdoor climbing is what's called continuation bias. So just we do something every day, nothing bad ever happens. We start to feel that that's just a safe activity. The most of us feel that way probably about driving or driving motorcycles. If you drive motorcycles, you might feel, yeah, I'm totally safe, but it's maybe the other drivers that need to worry about. So you get this continuation bias. And if you're participating in an activity like climbing and then inter-climbing gyms allow you to do that every day if you if you want to regardless of whether conditions might start to feel safer and more familiar, then then it really is on a probabilistic standpoint. Yeah, absolutely. Anything else you want to highlight or take away as you want to share from the risk part? Yeah, we'll see if anything else trickles in when we talk about maybe climber demographics. But I think that's the big highlight is, yeah, as climbers, we should all be taking the judgment making very seriously. And the personal responsibility we have in climbing to keep ourselves and our partners from making mistakes. And I think as at least what I read in the AAJ, quite often is that we're all identifying that really the primary root cause is like human caused accidents and whether that's poor decision-making, fatigue, number of things can go into that. But it's ourselves that we really need to worry about more than like having the latest cool tech or gear or anything. So yeah, and our research is pointing out basically to the same the same results. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's turn to the 2026 indoor climber survey. You know, there's a number of topics that stand out for me that I love to touch on. There's a ton of depth that we're not going to be able to cover today that is really applicable to climbing wall industry people in particular. So if if somebody is hearing this and they're like, oh my gosh, I run on gym like I want to know more about this. There's a ton that we're not going to talk about that you can find in the report, go on to the CWA's website, make sure you can get access to the report. There's a ton there. But I would love to just kind of like dig into some of our assumptions and anecdotal like feelings about who climbers are, what they what they behave like that kind of thing. And so I don't know, I guess I can start with is there any statistics that comes up that we're particularly interesting for you that you guys uncovered? Yeah, when when we start with the like demographic question that you just raised, we didn't see a lot of changes when it comes to gender dynamics in climbing or economic class. Those have stayed pretty consistent. Let's see a small uptick in people identifying as non-binary. I think I went from one to three percent between 2019 and 26. But the biggest shift that we saw in our survey was the age range of respondents went up. So in 2019, the majority or the plurality of our respondents were 25 to 34 and now 35 to 54 was was our largest attributing group. And I'm not sure if that is a meta trend of who has interest in time to take surveys or if it shows that the climbing populations may be aging a little bit, whether specifically indoors or or or more broadly. But that was I'd say the single most noticeable trend we had. Yeah, I definitely think that maybe I'm coming at it from when I started to climb and it does seem like it's kind of like a young person sport. But that is really interesting that increasingly people in their 30s are like maybe sticking with it or joining. You can't necessarily tell. But yeah, I'd say outside of our data that we have anecdotally talking to, you know, a lot of climbing gyms. There is certainly a growth in participation from the 55 plus category. And I think a lot of those are people who've been climbing for a long time. And then there's good evidence both in this survey and outside of it that once people do start climbing, more often than not, they're climbing for life and they stick with it as a lifestyle more than just like a fun activity. So you are probably a higher churn in the younger population and that's something that the gyms do see whether it's like a first time visitors returning to the gym. But once what's people do start coming, start becoming climbers, whatever, whatever that really means, they become climbers for life. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, one of the the ways that you phrased it in one of the reports about this was when comparing the 2019 and 2026 data is that I think you used the word like climbers are maturing. Yeah, I think so. And I think I might have said that even just more broadly for the sport. I feel like as we went through a boom in the awareness and popularity of climbing over the last 30 years, both indoor and outdoor, we've had to kind of step up and mature as both an industry and a sport. And that's necessitated maturing of the climbers themselves as well. I think we're a bit more careful and a bit more just a bit more mature as probably the best word for it than we have in the past. Okay, so one of the interesting data points for me was preferred climbing grades. You guys asked respondents to identify preferred low end and high end climbing grades, probably to inform like setting quotas and stuff like that for the climbing gyms to like determine how to instruct their setters to like serve their members, right? Like the product is the climbing, right? And so you have to figure out how much of a density of certain grades that they should do. I was curious like, why was it important to map those against onsite grade? Why was that a choice? And then what are some of the most popular grade ranges that people are climbing at these days? Yeah, great question. Part of the reason that we mapped against onsite grade was we did that in the 2019. So we wanted to see if there were any trends. So not sure the original decision there, but where it's important when it comes to just gym operations. It is how it informs the setting, the setting program and whether you're looking for something to say like higher turnover and you want to really be supporting climbers, there's coming in onsiting everything and coming back and expecting new climbs in a couple weeks versus versus training climbers to get better, become stronger, whether that's technique improvements or strength improvements and having the need for some more projects in the gym. So it really helps inform the turnover. Yeah, and then in terms of trends and what people are climbing pretty consistent between the last report and this one. And I'd say pretty consistent. This data is really mostly limited to the US and Canada, but looking at gyms that we work with around the world, I find very comparable grade ranges really almost everywhere. You'll see a little skewed depending on sometimes how close gyms are to outdoor climbing areas and what kind of real culture they have, but in a given city, you might even see that skew facility to facility business, the business based on who their kind of core customers are, whether it's more families or more youth team or more outdoor climbers. Yeah, that's super interesting that it could range so much, but is it like related to also the year, like the more, how does one say this? Experience level. Yeah, experience level. Yeah, like, so yeah, if you climb for five years, you suddenly have the ability to climb 513. I could tell you my experience, no, but maybe that's just me. No, I don't, I don't think that the length in the sport does, does really map onto those grades. And there's probably, you know, speaking about like a maturing respondent courses, probably a little bit of a leveling off or even like a decline at a certain, at a certain point, depending on how, how often people climb. Yeah, and just to for listeners to like put some numbers to this, what seems to be the most popular and obviously there's like a whole bunch of ranges, so you guys should look at the graphs, but the most common was that people prefer a low end to of 510 in a high end of 512. And then if you're doing bouldering grades is B2 to B5, which for me, like on a gut level, it was like, oh, that makes sense. When I see people climbing the gym, those are the most popular grades, kind of like if it's busy day, that's what you have to like, kind of fight to get on right at the gym. Yeah. So that kind of on a gut level makes sense to me that that's like where a lot of people can perform. Yeah, I think this is something that probably a lot of listeners could confirm themselves. If you go to your local gym and maybe you don't, maybe climb harder than that range, and you're not paying a lot of attention to those climbs, and you're warming up in some other way, you're climbing maybe on the bottom end of that range, you don't pay attention to the higher climbs. So if you start walking around your gym, and just kind of looking at what climbs are available, you're going to notice pretty fast ton of V2s, probably a ton of V4s, and then at V5 and up, it'll start to trickle off a little bit, have just a handful of the, you know, double digit, their R9, and double digit folders, if your gym sets those at all. And then likewise, just a handful of like BB-V0 climbs, and start to see a tick up in the number of climbs at V1. So the gym's Jim Strauss. to respond to those needs by creating the right volume of clients for people to go through. Yeah, so and then another interesting thing is that it seems like based on the data I saw that there is a strong frequency of climbing in a week. Like I think I saw a 73% said about or more than twice a week they'll go climbing in a gym. That's a lot. Yes, it is a lot. Yeah, and that is definitely another shift we had from 2019 in 2019. That's check my notes here so I don't state this but I believe it was 58% of people were climbing more than twice a week and that went up to 73% in the latest report. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, 60% were climbing two times a week or more in 2019 and 73% in this latest report. I think that tells us a few things that one thing the climbing gyms are doing really well is they're not just bringing new people into the sport. They're making communities third spaces however we'd want to call that and creating climbers that are staying highly engaged and and climbing is as a habit and oftentimes like the primary form of exercise or recreation and and oftentimes primary place you go to see your friends, it was your core friend group too. In 2019 the largest number of respondents would say that climbing was an important part of their exercise but now in 2026 we had 40% of people say that climbing is their primary form of exercise 45% of people said it's an important part so it's pretty pretty big shift there. What we don't know is when people think about going to a climbing gym and they're thinking about climbing in their head in the context of the survey if they're including some of the other amenities in a climbing gym. There's the traditional fitness equipment, yoga classes, most gyms that you guys know have a lot of options outside of just climbing so that's something I'd love to dig into a little bit more in the future is kind of carve up how many of these other amenities start counting as climbing once they existed in the climbing gym. Yeah that's a really a point interesting. One thing that I found very confirming I guess was the motivations for indoor climbing section. I think that I hear climbers say like like you know if you know in these interviews to scenarios or whatever when I ask climbers like why do you do it like why have you succeeded as much as you have a lot of people point to because I'm having fun and then this data also confirms I think it was like 81% of respondents said that was like a key motivator for indoor climbing. Yeah I think even beyond that is like 96% of people said to have fun was either very important or moderately important to the to the reasons they climb and if you include somewhat important it was like 99% of people wanted to have fun so. Yeah which kind of points to you know when people say like climbing is a game it is it's a fun game that we all play. And Alex Lowe was right with his his his famous affirmism. Yeah water some of the other motivations in order of most important as people reported to least important. Yeah so after after having fun the next next greatest was the physical health or fitness so people are there to to get in shape whether it's for climbing goals or or otherwise that that's very very similar numbers to having fun if it was 68% of people identified that it was very important to show for climate to climbing gyms for their physical health or fitness and if you include those other important categories that are a little bit softer it gets up to the high 90% of people are showing up for physical health or fitness and then after that which is probably no surprise to a lot of listeners would be the mental health or fitness 62% if you find it was very important to their mental health and mental fitness and if you include those those softer important categories same thing gets up into the 90% range I think mid 90% range for climber showing up for mental health and then time into our last little topic spending time with friends and family 45% of people were showing up and saying that that was a very important part of climbing to them and once again if you include those other moderately important somewhat important categories you're in the 90% range for respondents coming to gyms to spend time with friends and family so and then of lesser importance in general for people was training for outdoor climbing learning about myself and engaging the risk thing climbing which I found really illuminating and actually leads us to a really big take away when we compare the 2019 data to the 2026 data which was this kind of attitudes about outdoor climbing can you tell me more about what you guys found there yeah for sure yeah in 2019 out of the respondents we had just a little over 30% was like 31% didn't climb outdoors at all and in 2026 so it was about the same 29% didn't climb outdoors at all so the people responding that seemed to have pretty similar habits in terms of climbing indoors versus outdoors but the real shift was in their intent to climb outdoors in 2019 I think it was just over 90% of people had some interest in climbing outdoors eventually and I think with 70 plus percent of people said that they tended to start climbing outdoors within the next year in the latest report we had a 38% of people say they had no intention of starting to climb outdoors at all and only 20% of people said that they intended to to start climbing outdoors in the next 12 months so I was a really really big shift and one thing I read into that is kind of the cementing of indoor climbing as a distinct activity personally I believe it's still part of the sport of climbing with all of its different disciplines and indoor climbing would be just the same as a trad versus iced and mixed climbing versus bouldering there's just another type of climbing that you can do and I think that that starts to show that being the case a little bit more in the way that people are thinking about climbing so I think if you had like a similar survey asking people like what they wanted to start ice climbing might have kind of roughly similar responses to more people being just not interested in it in it at all versus like a larger question of outdoor climbing being segmented slightly differently yeah this kind of sense of like the gym is an end goal for many people like I think to dish like the way indoor climbing started was as a training tool for outdoors and as we just talked about that is less of a motivation for a lot of people now and we have this other similar data suggesting that people don't have that much more and more people are having less intent to climb outside yeah I think it's a natural evolution I think even just the discipline of bouldering went through you know really similar story arc of you know for all intents and purposes I think most people would say the bouldering started out as training for for real climbing usually right and and that's blossomed into its own distinct discipline in the sport with its own set of ethics and culture so yeah I think there's space and larger sport ecosystem for all these different types of participation and oftentimes people will cross into being multiple multiple disciplines but not everyone has to so I think that's where we're starting to see you shake out a little bit is less this idea that if I'm a climber I have to climb outside to be a real climber or I have to climb ropes to be a real climber and to have these like smaller smaller communities within this larger sport yeah absolutely you guys also surveyed attitudes and behaviors around training can you tell me about some of the findings there yeah I think a training for outdoor climbing specifically or well so one of the things that was interesting was just I think within the motivation for training data it is still fairly popular like 59 percent said like they are motivated to climb harder outdoors and that is why they're training but more people said they they work trying to climb harder inside so yeah tell me more about that whole dynamic yeah I found that pretty interesting as well so if we kind of recall the large number of people who said they were there and have fun and then there for health and mental fitness and wellness when you look at motivation for training then yeah let's see where you're going so I did find that pretty interesting so when we broke that question down a little bit more I think it was about 60 percent of people said that they were showing up to train specifically for climbing and 38 40 percent of people said that they weren't training specifically for climbing at all so those probably more of the there to have fun there for their you know physical health body sculpting goals I guess that worked climbing related but of the people that trained for climbing most of most of them trained I'd say occasionally it was about 60 percent of people trained occasionally and 40 percent of people trained regularly and then when you look at their motivations for for showing up and doing that the biggest response we had was to climb harder inside which is about 60 percent of people who train either occasionally or regularly we're training because they wanted to climb harder inside and pretty similar numbers 59 percent said they wanted to climb harder outdoors and I think that highlights this got a multi-disciplinary approach to the sport that I was just talking about like the people who are really showing up in and high frequency climbers climbing indoors to train for climbing they had pretty similar indoor outdoor motivations yeah and one of the things I found particularly interesting and kind of completely flipped my understanding honestly of training and training attitudes was the prioritization of different training equipment and obviously this is super helpful for the gyms but when you compare like what the coaches and the like trainer people are saying in their content that they're producing Which is like nobody trains weights everyone to train weights and yet is like one of the most prioritized like Assets that gyms have of according to the survey, right? Yes, and then also the extreme D prioritization of training boards, which I was like, that's crazy Yeah, so I don't know you have any thoughts on that Yeah, a lot yeah prior to working on CW worked for the company manufacturer the tread wall And so it was paid a lot of attention to training equipment and the way that people used training equipment And I wasn't as surprised at the responses we got there I think the one that really caught my eye was how prevalent pull apart is as a second to wait awaits as you mentioned Is the most used training tool in a climbing gym with a pull apart bar being being second and you know great core exercises You can do on a pull apart bar, but I don't know how much just like straight pull ups we need to be so I'd love to know what people are We're doing on the pull apart bars to make them wait so heavily, but we have for the training boards, campus boards, and And even really hang boards. I always saw lower utilization by the respondents then I think a lot of people would have expected But I think that's another one that a lot of a lot of us and people listening this can kind of confirm if they just go to their gym If you really pay attention when you're at the gym and you see it is using those that training equipment a lot of times It's the certainly hardest climbers in gyms, right? And the second biggest category is probably going to be some newer climbers that aren't really sure how to use it But like they've seen some other people getting stronger so they want to try it and what you don't see is a lot of the average climber Right, like so we talked about that B2 to B5 range. Don't see as many of them participating in traditional Climbing training tools are sport-specific as as you might just expect as a like being a person off the street and especially things like campus boards That really skews to those other ends. I think the development of better systems boards like the kilter boards and pension boards and moon boards out there Have have started to skew that a little bit so we saw training boards eco to be a more important factor in training equipment at gyms in 2026 But they're still they're still lower than they they could be if if those activities were a bit more accessible That's that's something I think gyms could have some room to improve on offering more coaching personal training Assisting that middle-level climber with how to use the type of equipment to progress if if that's part of their goals Which I think the data shows is is part of most people's goals who are training right? Yeah, I don't know if you have this information, but do you know if Attitudes about boards change at all per region or like area of the country Oh, that's a fantastic question. No, I have no no data about that and not really like an anecdotal take to throw at you either But yeah, I really like that question and maybe even particularly like Irwin versus rural or where gyms are co-located to outdoor climbing It could be really interesting to explore. Yeah, yeah I just anecdotally have a friend who just moved from Colorado to Boston and I think you know There's so certain everyone knows the Colorado climbing community's a little aggro Maybe and she was like wow nobody uses the boards in Boston. They're like Empty so I'm like less intimidated and I want to try it, but I don't know where to start and I think That's kind of exactly what you're speaking to is like if there were more programs to maybe like kind of get away from that sense of like I feel like an imposter or like I don't know what's going on like how do I use it because even like those little descriptions Like a little printout isn't like going to get you over the fact of like what if I look silly, you know Yeah, no that what if I look silly motivation especially in any sort of fitness gym environment is So important and yeah a really hard barrier for people to get over I think it was one of my favorite aspects of climbing though and why I work because I think climbing is one of the few sports that helps a road some of that shame and embarrassment Instincts that so many of us have yeah, yeah, and then one of the other you know kind of we've been touching on this We've going in and out on talking about climbing outdoors and what these climbers do outdoors and how many participate So one of the things that was interested in was just what climbers perceive as barriers to climbing outdoors? Yeah, I think it actually ties us really well into the same things that they that keep him off of training boards or campus boards is they don't know how We saw you know we saw some shift in the interest level of people wanting to climb outdoors But the reasons that they told us they worked climbing outdoors or was hard to get in there or get out there or rather was that they don't know How that was the number one answer both years and over the study was there's a knowledge gap there that has to get fixed and then and then secondary to that And it probably speaks a little bit to the mentorship problem that we all know exists in the sport is that they didn't have partners So they don't know how they don't have anyone to go with and then the third third most common answer is that they don't have the gear which is Maybe uniquely American Attitude towards things that you got to buy stuff to do become a climber or do things, but that it does fall off really the biggest the biggest Stereo is not knowing how and not having a partner to take you Mm-hmm And which is in the important context is that these these respondents could have answered there's no climbing nearby or concerns about danger and that those Concerns were much less significant compared to what you were just saying that those other feeling of not knowing how and not having a partner Yeah, so big I think big opportunity for yeah for guides to do more in gyms There's there's been different attitudes and attempts towards offering like gym to outdoor transition classes There's probably some there's this whole host of discussions that can happen about the FA to see those But that was another thing we saw in our in this survey was there was a declining appetite really for those Transition classes in 2019. There was a really strong interest in gyms offering outdoor classes And in 2026, I think close to 60% of the respondents said that they wouldn't take a Gym to crown class if they're if they're gym offered one So just like goes talk about earlier I think that starts to highlight where you see just different disciplines of the support starting to to really separate and self-identify It and just to make another analogy at say might be coming to be the same type of discussion is what's bouldering the sport climbing transition look like like That is a thing for some people, but it's not necessarily a thing for for everybody So that that's an area I think what we will have to evolve is like a whole Climbing community to figure out for the people that do want to climb indoors and outdoors What does that journey look like who's mentoring them ASEs got some some great initiatives on mentor? And then there's a whole guide network that people can tap into with the AMGA So I think making people aware of what a normal path through your Life as a climber looks like and some options to fit your budget and your time and your your needs is It's something we could really use as a sport as all kind of hidden with just who you know right now Yeah, and then kind of still sticking with the outdoor climbing attributes thing was the people self-identifying on the disciplines that they participated in and Also the disciplines that they were Interested in because I think you guys also surveyed on like no, I don't participate, but I have the intention to yes And yeah, so tell me about some of those interesting takeaways Yeah, and I think we talked right before to pop it on how this is a very visual report a lot of a lot of data a lot of graphs So what we surveyed in terms of interests for participating in different climbing disciplines We we were looking at more broadly indoors and outdoors. We didn't really make a distinction there So we're looking at a sport climbing top row track climbing, bouldering, ice climbing, rope soloing, aid climbing, free soloing And by far in a way, the greatest interest is in sport climbing 93% of people said that they wanted to try sport climbing Or I'm sorry are currently a sport climb 93% of people said they're currently sport climbing and so I could be leading in a gym or or climbing outdoors 90% of people said they're Preactively top-roping and one uptick. I saw that I found Really interesting maybe just because it's an area that I'm I'm interested in but the the rope soloing really ticked up from 2019 to 2026 as a as a higher level of participation than we've been in the past Yeah, I found that super interesting just because it is So technical and it does seem pretty constrained to outdoors like I guess I think you would not be able to get away With using a rope soloing system in a gym. So yeah, so at that to see that number so high was like really interesting And I wonder like I'm sure we can only speculate but maybe it's just like a higher percentage of like content out there about it I think that's fair to say some some newer equipment coming in I do a fair amount of Rope soloing and at least I've from what I've seen the community online for that's you know really really blossom We've got you equipment new company starting up. They're focused almost solely on a rope soloing So that'll be interesting to see the evolution of that discipline Yeah, there another discipline that got my attention is the interest in free soloing has that stayed the same has that gone up I think that has gone up, I think it's an important area to add in because it is something people do and talk about But I really don't know enough about like what's hidden the minds of people when they respond to that to know what's meaning all there So in 2026 we had 23% of people say that they that they're they're free soloing and Don't know if that's exactly true I don't know if people are including like some light scrambling in there or you know where does free soloing and bouldering Hit start and end for people that are climbing out in bishop or or what have you so I think that's Needs needs some more some more depths to to really pull something meaningful out of there, but yeah, certainly as everyone I'm sure is well aware of from talking to their friends and family who don't climb, it's definitely entered the lexicon of the mainstream people and what they and change attitudes and what they think about climbing. - Yeah, for sure. And then lastly, kind of similarly on disciplines, I noticed that aid climbing was an option. And I mean, even like 11% of people saying that they do it somewhat regularly, it seems like a lot. (laughs) Did you, did that change over time? Like in the last seven years, do you know, I don't know if you know off the top of your head, but. - Yeah, that one stayed pretty consistent as well. We didn't see too much shift in the participation in different disciplines, sort of like rope-solving, and then more bouldering than previously. - Okay. - It was being done. - That's super interesting. - Also, more people participating in ice climbing, or at least reporting that they're participating in ice climbing then in 2019 as well, didn't want to leave that without. - Wow, that's really cool. Interesting. - Yeah, I feel it feels similar to free solo. Just ice climbing has become more mainstream, certainly in the climbing communities, more, more, more paths to access to that, I think then there has been in the past. So not too surprising to see that grow, but it was quite a large growth. I think it went from something like 5% of people said they had an interest in it to like 40%, maybe even more than 50% of people saying they had an interest than trying ice climbing. - Yeah, absolutely. This is, you know, in the demographic section, you guys studied age and gender and race and having children and full-time employment. One of the things that I know is probably, it would have been just like very hard to capture given like the very nature of this is kind of like culturally, there's this pervasiveness of like, oh, the itinerant climber who lives in their van. And like, but that type of person probably doesn't often have a membership, a gym membership. And so I am so curious. I'm like, I want to know what percentage of the climbing community actually does that. But I do think that there's something kind of just like inherently challenging about trying to capture that in this type of survey. - Yeah, definitely. I'd say, you know, I think it says spot on them since we're surveying members and users of the climbing gyms. We see that represented in the demographic data, slightly higher economic demographics, slightly higher education, demographics, not the people that are, they're living the van lifelife style, and that's why they don't fall into either of those two buckets 'cause, especially with remote work, certainly can. Pretty easily with these days. But yeah, whether they're maintaining a membership at a gym or or participating in a survey like this, I think it would be, yeah, a little bit more, a little bit more questionable for sure. - Yeah, and then one of the, I guess, gut check things, you know, I'm just here to have vibes and feelings and you're the one with the data, is that I guess I'm surprised that when we asked about like, what demographics changed mainly over the last seven years, you guys saw an age change, but not a gender change, 'cause I would say on a feeling like my anecdotal evidence would be that there are so many women in the gyms these days. But I guess it hasn't actually significantly changed. - No, not at least not in who responds to our survey, and it did increase the number of women who responded to our survey, it did increase, it just wasn't like double digit percentages. And I think a big part of that, like so many things is increased representation. So I think we were talking generally about things, but just to get people to listening like the actual numbers, what we reported in 2026 was about 50, 54% male participation, 43% female participation. And then as I noted earlier on, an uptake of 3% non-binary or self-described gender. So pretty close to half of the participants are not male. But I think one of the things that's strange is the representation both in VDIA and the comfort level of just being out in the world and makes those other non-male participants more visible. - Yeah, that's a really good point about just like pervasiveness of visibility. Very cool. Well, that's mainly what I talk about today. There's so much more there that people should dig into the report for to explore those graphs and see the data themselves. Any last thoughts that you wanted to leave us with? - I love how much we got into talking about outdoor climbing. I think that's like the area that we're looking to in the future is what are all these different climbing disciplines, like I said before, how do we support climbers to come into the sport, stay in the sport, behave appropriately in the sport, ethically risk management-wise, and just make climbers better. Big part of what we're open to accomplish here. So hopefully there's some data here that's useful to the listeners to shape behavior opinion in that direction. But yeah, if anyone has any questions or needs more information, you noted that the full survey is available. There's also a blog article on our website that dives into some of these topics a little bit more deeply as well that people can check out for free that I have to pay for the full report. - Great. Well, thank you so much, Garnett. I love this conversation. It was really eliminating. - Yeah, it's great to meet you. And yeah, hopefully we'll talk again soon. - This episode was hosted by me, Hannah Provo, and produced by Sierra McGivney and Shane Johnson. Siked on this episode? Learn more about the American Alpine Club, become a member or get more involved at americanalpineclub.org. (upbeat music)