Climbling’s Olympics popularity fueling interest in sport at Far North Climbing Gym

With the Paris 2024 Olympics showing the best athletes in the world, one sport showcases a different kind of athleticism.

Sports climbing debuted in the Tokyo Games in 2021 highlighting athletes who go above and beyond others.

For a local perspective of what climbing is, Far North Climbing Gym gave insight into the fast-rising sport.

Far North Climbing has been part of Arcata for 17 years on K Street. Climbers can practice one of the forms of climbing known as bouldering.

“This is a bouldering gym, so bouldering is climbing without a rope usually on something smaller than like this height or smaller,” Far North Climbing Gym Manager Kyle Fisher said. “The way that it works is there’s like a start hold that you start on and finish hold you finish on. So you and then you just climb one color at a time. And the Olympics, they might have multicolored routes, but at least at our gym it’s like one color at a time.”

The route varies in difficulty from Beginner to “Tuff” with climbers working out the path to the top.

“The whole idea of climbing is you’re solving what we call them problems. Boulder problems, routes,” Fisher said. “But it really is a problem that you’re trying to solve and you’re using your body to solve it.”

Those routes were created by the Far North team, creating unique paths from scratch for climbers to try for themselves.

The niche sport has come a long way in three years, growing in popularity.

“We’ve gained quite a few members in the last few years,” Fisher said. “I think that’s in part due to climbing going into the Olympics and becoming more popular and people are more aware of what’s climbing on these little plastic boards.”

More members and those joining create a sense of community within the sport.

“Climbing is so universal and can be done by anyone. Like we have little kids come in here like one-year-old up to members that are well into their 60s,” Fisher said. “It’s kind of like dancing on the wall, you know, once you know how to do it, it feels pretty special.”