The Cult of Climbing: Where Meaning Lives Between the Holds
I found magic at a gym after years of swearing I’d never make sweat, chalk, and grit fixtures of my scene again. On the climbing wall, I spend wide-eyed moments deciphering the codes embedded in the carefully crafted routes, the kindergarten-colored holds on the wall cueing the way my gravity interacts with the shape of them. I unlock new levels of movement, pressing, shifting my weight, awakening every tiny muscle between my fingertips and my toes. For the last year and a half, I’ve been working at the climbing gym, checking people in, booping snack barcodes, learning the names of the regulars. I’ve spent hours observing climbing’s grip on the community, wondering why we keep showing up to do hard things in a world built on instant gratification.
For the last year and a half, I’ve been working at that climbing gym. I check people in. I boop barcodes. I learn the names of regulars and note how the new ones slowly transform. I’ve watched climbing’s grip on people and wondered: Why do we keep showing up to do hard things in a world so built on instant gratification?
For me, it started as a personal refuge — a grounding ritual that pulled me out of the digital vortex and back into my physical self. But over time, I started to sense a deeper magnetic force at play. What compels so many of us — strangers, seekers, introverts, addicts, achievers — to gather around a synthetic wall and test our limits, over and over again?
From Survival to Subculture
Climbing isn’t new. Humans have scaled cliffs for millennia — for shelter, food, burial rites. In Nepal, honey hunters still rappel down sheer rock faces to harvest from cliff-dwelling bees. In the American Southwest, Indigenous peoples reached hidden dwellings carved into stone. Climbing began not as leisure, but as necessity.
But in the late 19th century, mountaineering as a sport emerged across Europe. By the 1950s and 60s, figures like John Gill began to redefine climbing as a gymnastic art form, introducing chalk and dynamic movement. And by the 1990s, with the rise of indoor gyms, climbing began its quiet cultural takeover.
Today, gym climbing in the U.S. is a billion-dollar industry. There are over 600 commercial gyms, frequented by more than five million climbers — more than all other climbing disciplines combined. And no one saw it coming.
Alan Watts, one of the architects of modern sport climbing, once said: “The whole climbing-gym industry in the U.S. was just a bunch of dirtbag climbers trying to avoid getting a real job.” He bailed on the industry in 1997. “I figured it would never amount to much.” He was wrong.
The Third Space: Belonging in a Postmodern World
So what’s driving this boom?
Sure, convenience plays a role. Gyms are urban, accessible, and an engaging way to move. Climber and content creator Hannah Morris argues that it goes deeper: climbing gyms meet a very human need. In an era of social fragmentation, they’ve become third spaces — places to gather, connect, and belong.
There’s something oddly wholesome about climbing. It’s not cool in the traditional sense. If “cool” is casual detachment, climbing is the opposite — a sweaty, earnest pursuit that demands full engagement. You can’t scroll on the wall. You can’t fake your way through a crux. You have to be present. You have to care.
Why We Climb: Between Puzzle and Prayer
So why do we climb? Why keep returning, bruised and sore, to problems that seem designed to humble us?
Some say it's presence — that place where everything else falls away. Others point to the satisfaction of solving a physical puzzle, unlocking a new sequence of movement. There’s joy in simply trying — and in failing better.
Free Solo’s Alex Honnold once joked: “I climb because I’m not good at anything else.” But Greg Child said it better:“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery of why we climb.”
Climbing gives structure to chaos. It’s a clear problem with defined limits — something increasingly rare in a world that feels messy and boundaryless.
But it also gives us something less tangible: meaning.
The Great Identity Spiral: Who’s a “Real” Climber?
One of the more curious aspects of climbing is how easily it becomes identity. What makes someone a “real” climber? Do you have to climb outside? Send V6? Know how to pronounce “carabiner”?
The Cut described this well:
“The prep involved lends an aura of extreme athleticism... You feel like you’re going on an expedition, even if it’s just a few feet up a sweaty wall.”
In the gym, the lifestyle spectrum plays out in full color. There’s the Boulder Bro — shirtless (but beanie on), powered by chalk, hubris, and Yerba Mate. There’s the First Timer, wide-eyed and nostalgic for that one birthday party in fourth grade. And then there’s you — the Hobbyist. A little obsessive, a little earnest. Still mispronouncing belay device names but fully committed. Climbing has slowly become your personality.
At its best, climbing is inclusive — if you’re on the wall, you’re a climber. At its worst, it can feel like a closed ecosystem with its own dialect and rules. A friend of mine went to a climber dinner party — she wasn’t one. She said it felt like they were speaking another language. And maybe they were. Words like beta, pump, and projecting roll off the tongue when you're part of the cult.
But once you’re in — you’re in. Climbers don’t proselytize. They just quietly hand you a harness and say, “Let’s go.”
A Practice in Presence and Trust
Unlike many sports, climbing is inherently cooperative. Even in competition, you’re rarely rooting against someone. You spot each other. You cheer each other on. You share beta. You celebrate sends like they’re collective wins.
Climbing partners don’t need to share deep conversations or life philosophies—they just need to trust each other with the rope. You are cells of one single organism, unaware of where muscle starts and rope fibers end, but completely aware of your humanity. Maybe that’s where the magic reveals itself, in how it quietly insists on something rare and vital–our undivided presence.
There’s something holy in that.
The Existential Pull of the Wall
In GQ, one writer described modern climbing this way:
"Collectively traumatized by the monstrous pixelated future we’ve created, we are in hysterical pursuit of the primal... Climbing is where we seem to be finding it.”
It’s not punk like skating. Not poetic like surfing. It’s something more earnest. Almost… devotional.
“With its work ethic and goal setting and math-y language... the modern climbing gym is more like a church than a bar.”
And maybe that’s the point.
In a time of endless distraction, climbing insists on attention. In a world full of noise, it demands stillness. It offers the rawest kind of human magic: cooperation, focus, and the courage to try again.
Author’s Note: This piece is drawn from my lived experience. I used AI as a tool for editing and structure, but every word and perspective is my own.
