Laura M.
Yelp
TLDR; I had a really negative experience at this gym. The gym itself seems all right; kind of on the smaller side but it wasn't too crowded on a Friday in the middle of the day which was nice. It did seem clean and they had loaner gear available, which I always think is nice.
The real problem was the bizarre belay approval process. I climbed at Crux in Austin years ago and I was in the system as being permitted to belay both top-rope and lead. It wasn't showing up in the system, but maybe it expires after a few years? Ok, so no big deal, I figured I will just do the belay test.
So this guy comes over and offers to do the top-rope belay test first, which I was like ok sounds good. He asked me to tie in first as if I were climbing. Which I did. Then he's like "what did you do?" So I explained to him that I tied a double figure-8 through my harness, which is doubled-back, and the knot isn't too far from my harness, and the tail isn't too long. Then he's like "why did you do this? It's not enough just to do it right, you have to know why you're doing it." So I'm like, ok, um.. because I don't want to fall down? It was just really weird, like he even told me there's nothing wrong with how I tied it, but he wasn't satisfied. He wanted to know "How do you know it's a double figure 8?" I was just totally perplexed. I was like "Um, because that's what the knot looks like??" It seems like he was looking for some kind of secret password or something. I thought maybe he wasn't happy about the tail (I normally leave like a 4-6 inch tail but I have been to gyms where they actually require you to leave a long tail and tie it off with a double overhand knot). So I offered to redo it with a longer tail and he was like "no, that's not the problem." So I was like "can i just retest a little later?" because I figured i would look up what the american alpine club recommends for the length of the tail and then do it again.
At this point, he said "yeah that's no problem you can do it again within 24 hours." My friend who was with me also heard him. I thought it was strange "why within 24 hours?" but I was thinking like in 10 mins so I was like ok. Then I came back and asked to retest and he said "No, I meant AFTER 24 hours" which actually makes more SENSE but it's not what he actually SAID. And I wouldn't have given up so easily if I had known that he wouldn't let me try again!
Anyways the whole experience was just really weird and off-putting. He didn't even let me do an actual belay test, but he told me I could still climb on top-rope which meant I was climbing on my own knot which I was tying EXACTLY as I'd shown him, and he was apparently ok with it. So what exactly is the point of not letting me do the test? If he actually thought there was anything wrong with how I tied in, then I would REALLY HOPE he would have brought it to my attention. But he didn't. I thought the whole point of having people test is to make sure they are climbing safely? But it doesn't seem like safety was the issue. I can't honestly say what the issue was, it's like the guy just didn't like me or something.
Just as background, I learned to climb over 20 years ago and some things have changed but as far as I can tell, nothing about tying in to climb on a top rope has changed.