That’s What She Set

9 min readDec 3, 2019

An adaptable curriculum for a route setting clinic for women and gender nonconforming climbers

A sticker from the 2017 Woman Up climbing festival in San Francisco

Route setting — the act of making up indoor climbing problems for folks to solve on the wall — is dominated by men whose physiques can be very different from those of many women’s. While statistics on the subject are scarce, one survey of 28 gyms across Canada found that less than a quarter of all route setting staff, 23.9% (five gyms employed no woman route setters and one outlier employed three).

This means that the first experiences that women and gender nonconforming people have in climbing gyms is predominantly colored by men — and to some that can be a frustrating experience and may deter them from picking up the sport altogether.

“With route setting being dominated by men right now, it really caters to a specific body type and a specific style,” said Kara Norton, the only woman route setter on the GP81 route setting team said. “And so when women come to the rock gym and they come to climb, I think it can be discouraging for a lot of them.”

Route-setter Kara Norton speaking about her experience being the only woman routesetter on her team at GP81 in New York City.

So how do we change this?

Diversifying any industry cannot be done overnight — it’s a long term endeavor that takes multiple actions over time and that require us to build multiple pathways for people of different backgrounds, mindsets and demeanors to feel welcome in a space.

One way of doing that is to share knowledge and train people while also being open to learn from their experience. And that’s what our climbing group set out to do in New York: we put together a series of three clinics around forerunning and route setting that was meant to empower women and gender nonconforming folks by equipping them with the skills necessary to set their own routes. We also made sure we worked with route setting instructors who were eager to learn from their students to improve their own craft with this newfound input.

Based on anecdotal feedback from gym employees, climbers and participants, the clinics were a success all around: the route setters we worked with were pleased with the enthusiasm and insights that the students brought to them, the women and gender nonconforming climbers were thrilled to learn a new skill and experiment with route setting, and the feedback from climbers of all gender identities was overwhelmingly positive.

Beyond the individual events though, our endeavor was to prove a concept: this workshop format can be a fruitful way to collaborate with gyms, to bring womxn climbers into the field, and to develop a curriculum that can be refined and reused over time so we can eventually build a pipeline for more women and gender nonconforming folks to engage with and potentially enter the field of route setting.

What follows below is a simple blueprint for route setters and gym owners to run their own route setting clinics for women and gender nonconforming people. This curriculum is based on the clinics we ran at Brooklyn Boulders and GP81 in New York. While it may reflect the ways in which our route setting clinics were

set up for our specific circumstances, this is definitely not the only way to teach a route setting clinic. You’re very welcome to take what you see below and adapt it for your own needs — if anything, see this as a good starting point if you don’t know where to begin.

The curriculum

Clinic Description

In this clinic, women and gender nonconforming people will learn how to create bouldering problems, or to set routes. They will also learn how to test and adjust them, a process also known as forerunning. This manifests itself in both hard and soft skills: clinic participants will learn how to safely use tools to affix holds on a wall but also how to conceptualize a route and think about the climber’s experience in this creative process.

This workshop is also meant for route setters to receive more feedback from climbers whose bodies and climbing styles may be very different from theirs and whose perspectives may also help them better make room for a variety of voices to be heard in the route setting and forerunning process.

Objective and Outcomes

The objective of the workshop is for participants to familiarize themselves with the processes that entail routesetting — from picking out the holds and feet, to putting them on the wall, to climbing and adjusting them to optimize a problem. But furthermore it is to demystify the process of route setting and, hopefully in some cases, to encourage participants to get more involved in the profession, whether it is to become an occasional forerunner or to apply for full-time route setting positions.

An image from our route setting clinic in New York City

For the gym employees, this workshop would hopefully hone their instructional skills while also allowing them to see their profession through a fresh set of eyes. Receiving feedback from an overwhelmingly female and gender nonconforming group may ideally also help identify new ways to set difficulty levels or how to integrate a larger variety of moves into the sport.

Last but not least, the purpose of these workshops is to also enhance the experience of the people visiting the gym overall: bringing a diversity of bodies into the route setting process can lead to a greater variety of climbing problems to gyms that accommodate for a larger population of climbers.

It is important to note that to maximize for a wide range of participants you should aim to charge low prices (our tickets ranged from $0–20 per clinic participants) and allow for people with different economic backgrounds/job obligations to participate. This can mean doing clinics during different time windows and juggling the needs of the gym employees with the needs of the students (we did two day-long clinics during the week and one 3–4 hour clinic after office work hours, starting in the late afternoon/early evening). To compensate route setters for additional work, we put together a voluntary tip jar but would urge gyms to chip in or find sponsorship.

Details

This curriculum is optimized for 10 students who are split into groups of 2 or 3. There should be 3 to 4 route setters on site for the clinic. Each group of students will work with one routesetter who shepherds along the group’s progress and assists them with hands-on tasks.

Instructors will prepare the course by doing the following before students arrive. They will:

Strip the walls so they are ready to be set
Prepare power tools, bolts, safety gear, and other equipment necessary for route setting
Gather, sort and bring out hand holds, foot holds and volumes

Students will learn the following skills during the workshops:

Choosing the right bolts for the right holds and volumes
Using power tools, ladders and other equipment safely
Affixing volumes as well as holds onto the wall
Conceptualize and compose a climbing route
Climbing the problem and providing constructive feedback to improve it
Adjust climbing routes based on that feedback
Grade and mark the problems

Students should be able to climb at least V3 level to be able to fully benefit from the clinic.

Sample class schedule

There were two versions of this workshop that can attract different sets of student bodies.

2-day version

This workshop can also be done as a one-day workshop that is comprised of the Day 2 schedule. In this version, students will be able to set around 2 problems and spend more time internalizing the various processes route setting entails. Day-long versions of this workshop can be conducted in emptier areas on a weekend or, as we did, on a weekday before rush hour on a regular setting day.

Day 1:

Forerunning clinic (3–4 hours)

This is an introductory clinic for people to get a feel for the process. It can serve

Students arrive (15 mins)
Welcome with instructors and speaking of goals of the day (15 mins)
Instructors give information on how forerunning works
Goals are: to forerun climbs that setters have already put on the wall and help improve them
Students warm up on various problems (15 mins)
Students try out the problems, give feedback for improvement, students and instructors adjust problems (2–3 hours)
Cleanup of the area and wrap up (15 mins)

A sample of our Eventbrite page for this clinic can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/thats-what-she-set-part-1-forerunning-tickets-67758887657

Day 2:

Full on route setting and forerunning clinic (full day with lunch hour)

Students arrive (15 mins)
Welcome with instructors and speaking of goals of the day (15 mins)
Goals are: in groups of 2–3, set 1–2 problems, forerun them and grade them
Instructors give basic introduction to safety measures, to working with power tools, ladders, and other equipment (15 mins)
If volumes are to be part of the wall, students set up volumes on the wall before starting with their problems (that’s a good time for students to first get a feel for affixing objects on a wall) (15 mins)
Students choose holds (holds have been pre-organized by color by instructors) and conceptualize; students put together problems (note, there is no climbing during this process) (2–3 hours)
Lunch break (1 hour)
Instructors give information on how forerunning works (15 mins)
Students warm up on various problems (15 mins)
Students try out the problems, give feedback for improvement, Students and instructors adjust problems (2.5–3 hours)
Cleanup of the area and wrap up (30 mins)

A sample of our Eventbrite page for this clinic can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/thats-what-she-set-part-2-route-setting-tickets-71453458217

3.5-hour version

This workshop can also be done as a 3.5-hour workshop. In this version, students will be able to set 1 problem. Given that this version of the workshop is very condensed.

Students arrive (15 mins)
Welcome with instructors and speaking of goals of the day (15 mins)
Goals are: in groups of 2–3, set 1 problem, forerun them and grade them
Instructors give basic introduction to safety measures, to working with power tools, ladders, and other equipment (15 mins)
If volumes are to be part of the wall, students set up volumes on the wall before starting with their problems (that’s a good time for students to first get a feel for affixing objects on a wall) (15 mins)
Students choose holds (holds have been pre-organized by color by instructors) and conceptualize (15 mins)
Students put together problems (note, there is no climbing during this process) (45 mins)
Instructors give information on how forerunning works (15 mins)
Students warm up on various problems (15 mins)
Students try out the problems, give feedback for improvement, students and instructors adjust problems (45 mins)
Cleanup of the area and wrap up (15 mins)

A sample of our Eventbrite page for this clinic can be found here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/thats-what-she-set-route-setting-forerunning-clinic-tickets-75320937953

Beyond the clinics

These kinds of clinics can be a wonderful way to jumpstart conversations among climbing professionals, climbers and other communities interested in this sport.

Sustaining these conversations and continuing to build on the success of a handful clinics means commitment over time. Below are a few recommended courses of action that can be low-cost to implement with high impact.

Recommended course of actions:

Teach, set, repeat: This template of workshops can be taught over and over again and integrated into the general schedule of a rock climbing gym. The benefit of this can be a long term improvement of who is interested in working for or being part of a gym. Recruitment and diversifying pipelines takes time and consistency. A one-time event will only reach so many people. Repetition over time helps instructors perfect their skills, learn more from their actual climbing clientele and also foster a better relationship with those whom they ultimately want to reach and serve. It also helps discover and train talent over time. But above that, it signals a commitment to inclusivity. In many ways, this clinic can be an investment into the less measurable success of a gym: it encourages participation in a community and models good behavior within the industry.
Fellowship/apprenticeship: one potential next step that could be explored is the creation of a fellowship or the molding of an existing apprenticeship with diversity and in this case with women- or gender nonconforming folks in mind. This is a structural commitment that could be subsidized by the business and/or officials sponsors.