Hanz Kroesen sifts through a bucket of climbing holds like a kid looking for the right Lego piece.
They’re stored in a room behind the bouldering wall at The Source Climbing Center where you’ll find the steel crossbeams and plywood frame that support the concrete slab on the other side.
As the main route-setter at The Source, Kroesen creates problems he knows people can solve.
“It’s an interesting art, route-setting,” Kroesen says.
Kroesen unbolts all of the holds and strips off every bit of tape, wiping the concrete slab clean before he starts route-setting. The new holds are organized by color, shape and size into neat little piles on the floor. Big holds, buckets, handles and jugs in one pile, and smaller holds, crimps, chips, pockets and pinches, in another.
With one foot on the wall and one foot on a ladder, he marks where the holds will go with colored tape. Then he goes back and bolts the holds in. Each hold can support 400 to 600 pounds.
Kroesen looks back at his work and starts to climb the route he just made. He moves like a cat along the bouldering wall — graceful and precise, even in tennis shoes. It’s similar to choreographing a dance, he says. It’s about being inventive and creating your own classics. There’s pressure to get it just right. If people don’t like the routes, they won’t return to the climbing gym.
But if he sees people climb it again and again, he knows he’s successful.
Kroesen likes to watch and wait for the “aha!” moment when a climber works through a problem and figures out the series of moves.
o What: A climbing gym in downtown Vancouver that recently passed its first anniversary.
o Where: 1118 Main St.
o Hours: Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
o Cost: Adult, $12 a day, $55 a month; Student/youth, $10 a day, $45 a month; $3 for a harness; $4 for shoes; $2 for chalk bag.
o Information: 360-694-9096, http://sourceclimbing.com, http://facebook.com/sourceclimbing.
On the climbing wall, holds are molded after certain types of rock. You’ll find the limestone of Fontainebleau, France, the granite of Yosemite in California and the welded tuft of Smith Rock in central Oregon.
“Which is, if you ask me, kind of rare,” says climber Steve Altergott, 28, of Vancouver. He snatched up the very first membership at The Source before it opened in November 2011. He frequents Ozone, a popular climbing site near Mount Pleasant in Skamania County.
There’s been a shift among the climbing community, though; with the rising popularity of climbing gyms, more and more people make the indoors their arena and never step foot on an actual boulder.
The wall offers an ever-changing canvas of climbing routes.
“It’s your chance to play God with this little mountain,” said Bryan Caldwell of Portland, who helps set routes at The Source.
Hanz Kroesen sifts through a bucket of climbing holds like a kid looking for the right Lego piece.
They're stored in a room behind the bouldering wall at The Source Climbing Center where you'll find the steel crossbeams and plywood frame that support the concrete slab on the other side.
As the main route-setter at The Source, Kroesen creates problems he knows people can solve.
"It's an interesting art, route-setting," Kroesen says.
Kroesen unbolts all of the holds and strips off every bit of tape, wiping the concrete slab clean before he starts route-setting. The new holds are organized by color, shape and size into neat little piles on the floor. Big holds, buckets, handles and jugs in one pile, and smaller holds, crimps, chips, pockets and pinches, in another.
With one foot on the wall and one foot on a ladder, he marks where the holds will go with colored tape. Then he goes back and bolts the holds in. Each hold can support 400 to 600 pounds.
Kroesen looks back at his work and starts to climb the route he just made. He moves like a cat along the bouldering wall -- graceful and precise, even in tennis shoes. It's similar to choreographing a dance, he says. It's about being inventive and creating your own classics. There's pressure to get it just right. If people don't like the routes, they won't return to the climbing gym.
But if he sees people climb it again and again, he knows he's successful.
Kroesen likes to watch and wait for the "aha!" moment when a climber works through a problem and figures out the series of moves.
It’s about mind-set and technique, more than strength. Fear keeps a climber from moving forward and keeping their breath calm, Halsted says. When a climber commits themselves to a pitch, letting the day’s thoughts and stresses fall through the cracks, they may find a sort of calm.
“It’s moving meditation, for sure,” Halsted says.
He tunes out people while he’s climbing. He’s too focused on his breath and movement to notice anything else.
“You don’t have enough attention to focus on any other problems in life,” Kappler says. “Figuring out problems (at the climbing gym), I feel like it correlates to how you solve problems in life.”
Kappler is drawn toward strategy games like chess and Sudoku puzzles. She says that rock climbing is the perfect marriage of body and mind stimulation. A climber can’t mindlessly pick weights up and put them down to get a workout; they have to plan and build a portfolio of moves.
