An indoor gym setting is likely the very best way to experience climbing for the first time.
Climbing gyms provide safe, convenient, and controlled environments in which to learn appropriate and efficient movements, gain climbing specific strength, and develop safe belaying skills. Indoor gyms are now the primary means that most people gain entry to the sport.
However, for many if not most people, learning to climb in an indoor gym is the means to the end of climbing outdoors on the endless cliffs that cover the southern Utah landscape. Unfortunately, the small set of skills that are necessary in an indoor setting are vastly inadequate for the multitude of climbing situations encountered on even the most civilized of local cliffs.
Outdoor climbing is both uncontrolled and unpredictable, where loose rock, bad /old protection, ledges to land on, old school mindsets, and poisonous wildlife are just a few of the subjects that need to be understood and accounted for.
This comprehensive course of instruction begins where the indoor environment leaves off and covers all of the necessary skills, techniques, knowledge and judgements that allow for a lifetime of safe and rewarding outdoor climbing.
