It’s been open for just over a year, but Seven Bays Bouldering has already shaken up the Halifax sports scene.
“Originally there were a bunch of people from the climbing community lining up to get the memberships, but not as many newcomers,” said Emilie Hyland, who has worked at the gym since it opened in May 2015.
When the gym added a café about a month later, more people started coming in to enjoy the food or do work and many eventually warmed up to climbing, explained Hyland.
There are now a lot more beginners climbing at Seven Bays, and most of them are people who started bouldering when the gym opened.
Michael Landsman is one such person. He found out about Seven Bays from a sister gym called Allez Up in his hometown of Montreal.
“As a kid all the birthday parties were [at Allez Up], and I had fun doing it back then, so when I saw it opening up [in Halifax] I figured ‘why not give it a shot?’”
Landsman has been bouldering on and off since the gym opened in Halifax, but he is looking to take it more seriously going forward. At the beginning of the month he bought a new semester-long student pass that Seven Bays offers at a discount to student climbers.
In theory, bouldering is a simple sport, but it’s a whole different story when someone is actually up on the wall.
Brute strength alone won’t cut it. Each route up the wall – or “puzzle” in bouldering lingo – requires a precise set of motions to solve. It’s a physical challenge and a good workout, but every once in a while a climber will need to step back and take a look at the route to figure out the best way to climb it.
“Work hard and work smart,” said Landsman. Seven Bays has a colour-coded system of routes, meaning each route is made up of holds of a single colour. The colours represent the difficulty of the routes, with grey being the easiest and white being the hardest.
Even first-timer climbers can conquer the few easiest puzzles their first time on the wall, but soon they need to hone their strength, skills and technique to progress through the harder colours.
Seven Bays resets its walls regularly, a quarter at a time, so that by the end of every month there will be a totally new set of walls compared to the previous month
Landsman also stressed the open and accepting atmosphere at Seven Bays. “Don’t feel self-conscious,” he said. “Everybody here started as a beginner… it’s a super welcoming environment.”
“Sometimes people show up not even intending to climb, they’re just here to socialize,” Hyland added. Students can come to unwind, focus on climbing, go and study, enjoy a snack and a drink and go back to climbing all without having leaving the premises.
Want to check out the gym? Seven Bays offers all kinds of options for prospective climbers:
Single-day passes: $13.91
Prepaid student deals (unlimited use of the facility): $64 for one month, $154 for three months, $264 for six months and $494 for a year.
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