Ollie Wragg
Lead setter
Lead setter since 2017. Techy, body-position-dependent climbing is his signature. Also officials for GB Climbing and judged the IFSC Lead World Cup in Edinburgh 2022.
Route setting
A fresh wall every Friday.
A different section is stripped, cleaned and reset every week, so there is always something new and the whole gym turns over across the cycle.
What happens on a reset.
The wall gets stripped to bare ply. Every hold comes off, gets washed, and goes back in a tub. Then the setters start again from nothing.
Setting is a design job more than a strength one. Someone decides what a problem should feel like, builds it, climbs it, changes it, gets somebody else to climb it, and changes it again. The good ones make you move in a way you would not have chosen.
By the time you turn up it looks obvious. That is the point, and it takes a day.
Grades
How to read the wall.
If you have only ever climbed outdoors or at a wall that uses numbers, this takes about five minutes to get used to.
Colours, not numbers
Every problem is one colour of hold from the start to the top. Follow your colour and ignore everything else on the wall. [The colour order, easiest to hardest, is on the board by the entrance and is worth a photograph on your first visit.]
Start on the marked holds
Two hands on the marked start holds, then off the floor. The problem is over when both hands are matched on the top hold and you are in control.
There is always something for you
Setters deliberately spread a reset across the range, so the easiest problems on a new wall are meant to be walked up. If everything looks hard, you are looking at the wrong colour.
The setting team
The ones who make you fall off.
Freddie Hostettler
Route setter
Joel
Route setter
Photo still to come. Lucie, route setter at Boulder Shack
Lucie
Route setter
Come and try the new wall.
Friday is reset day, so Friday evening and Saturday are when everything is freshest. It is also when the gym is at its best.