Today’s guest is Roy Quanstrom. Roy is a USA Climbing Level 4 Routesetter and he’s a hold shaper, having created Trango’s Fuegos Calientes and Khans shapes. He’s also the facility sales coordinator at Trango. The main focus of today’s episode is the idea of sustainability in the world of climbing holds. What does that even mean? How is sustainability achieved? Where are we at right now when it comes to sustainability in the climbing holds sector? And where are things going or where might things be going? So, if you’ve ever wondered about the green movement as it pertains to climbing holds, or if you’ve ever wondered about recycling climbing holds, this episode is for you. There’s always more to say on such a big topic, and there are many hold brands and manufacturers coming together to drive the industry forward, but Roy packs a lot of valuable insights from his perspective as a setter and shaper into this conversation, as well as thoughts on how the routesetting trade has changed over time and what goes into a great crew.
Thank you OnSite for your support!
And thank you Devin Dabney for your music!
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
03:00 – Roy’s Role at Trango
06:49 – Changes in Routesetting
10:16 – Changes in Routes
13:49 – Routesetting: Form vs. Function
24:34 – Sustainability Terms
30:15 – The Climbing Industry Becoming More Sustainable
34:14 – Third-Party Feedback at Trango
36:56 – Recycling Holds
40:18 – Trango’s Sustainability Journey
43:46 – Staying Up to Date with Sustainability
48:01 – Hold Shapes and Sustainability: Breaking, Polishing, Texture
53:50 – Changing Opinions
58:11 – Hold Weight
01:00:03 – Looking Forward
01:02:03 – Parting Thoughts
01:04:06 – Sustainable Fabrics
01:07:53 – Closing
Abridged Transcript
BURGMAN: For starters, I want to hear about your current role at Trango because it sounds really interesting…
QUANSTROM: I think that the role has some interesting prerequisites that I happen to fit really well into. So, first and foremost, you have to be able to connect with routesetters. So, when people ask me, “What do you do?” I say, “I design and sell climbing holds.” That’s the base job. But beyond that, Trango has a sales program that’s unlike any other hold company that I’ve ever been associated with or worked for. It’s built a lot more like an outdoor industry company. So, I’ve had the advantage of 20 years of routesetting. But I’ve also been a rep, I’ve been a tech representative, I’ve worked in outdoor industry startups that are in the ski industry, as far away from climbing as you can be in the outdoor world [or] rock climbing, I guess.
So, I am just super excited to bring what felt like random skills into one cohesive job. It’s sales and routesetting and hold design—which, if you’re a person like me listening to this, you’re like, “Oh yeah, I want that job.” And I went after this job pretty hard and thankfully I’m here. But yeah, the way that Trango works is—it’s not just me. We have representatives all over the country. So, I get to work with the reps to help equip them to walk into gyms and communicate with routesetters. And then I get to do it personally as well. So, I oversee all the U.S. and I oversee the hold sales strategy for the greater sales team here at Trango.
…What’s been the biggest change that you’ve noticed in not only the types of routes that are being set but also just in general the types of holds that are being designed?
It’s not very sexy, but the biggest change is probably monochromatic routesetting. What that has enabled efficiency-wise, but also design-wise—I guess you could say wall angle or wall design as well—I remember the first time that I got to set in the monochromatic style, and I set twice as many boulders, and on routes it was even better. You didn’t have somebody scrutinizing your tape angle anymore. You didn’t have to pre-tape all these things. All the strategies that we relied on to be really efficient with the tape just went out of the window or went out of style. And then you can have more dedicated boulders, more dedicated routes.
I think that the problem that arose from that was now you can’t have the one feature that has six pieces of tape on it. So, there was a barrier to macros in a specific color. But we’ve gotten over that now and I think the trickle-down effect is less density, more macros, and different integrations with volumes and things like this. Yeah, I think the two biggest differences that I’ve seen in my career as a routesetter have been monochromatic routesetting and wall design.
…Can you talk a little bit about the actual design of the routes? Have you noticed big changes over your 20 years in that regard?
Well, assets have changed. They’ve improved a lot. Now we can make bigger features for less money. And the way that we approach our assets is much different than when I started routesetting, as well. So, when you think about early-generation holds, each hold had a very specific purpose. And you still get these holds shaped these days, but the ultra-intricate feature thing is less common. And I’ve debated with a lot of people about why that is. Why don’t you have a big rail that has a bunch of sweet spots and stuff like that? I still love that style of hold, but the best answer that I’ve gotten is holds are less like art projects, and they’re more like lumber now.
So, when I go to set a competition especially, I’m looking to see what I can build, not necessarily what I can create; it’s less of an art project. Weirdly now, even though they look a lot more like art projects, I walk into setting a boulder and it feels more like I’m framing a house or something. I’m putting things onto things. So, when you have this perspective as a routesetter, I need a tool. I don’t need a pristine piece of creation; I need a tool. I need this big flat rail so that I can make it more intricate with other things. And I’m going to tack different assets onto different assets…
So, when you think about routesetting from that perspective, things get a lot simpler, the shapes get a lot simpler because you’re trying to connect all of those pieces together to create something that is a product that people haven’t seen before, even though they’ve seen these things a hundred times. We’re going to put it together in such a way that it’s going to take you by surprise. So, I think that when you look at the development of hold shaping, wall design, volumes, all of these things, it’s drifted more toward the perspective of building rather than creating some sort of really striking piece of some really striking feature that’s on the wall, something really intricate.
…Is that something you think the routesetting community, on the whole—with the caveat being that obviously it’s hard, [and] you don’t speak for all routesetters—but is the community sort of trending that way too and tending to think of themselves more as tradespeople as opposed to artists?
I just had this conversation with a routesetter not too long ago where it was this exact same thing. My headsetter walks into work like they’re about to frame a house and I walk into work like I’m about to paint a painting. And I love that for both people. Because if I’m assembling a crew, whether it’s for a commercial set or for a climbing competition, I don’t want a bunch of framers. And I can be both; I can be the “artsy-fartsy” person, or I can be the [one] picking out two-by-fours from a lumber yard and sort of fit in whatever vein needs to happen. But I think less about, “Should routesetting be seen as a trade or should it be seen as an artistic expression.”
I want people who feel strongly about either side on my team because the product that’s going to come from that is going to be great. And I don’t want to be a person that advocates for one side of that. I think that both have their value, and I think both have their pitfalls as well. And working together to get the most out of each perspective I think is really cool. And if everyone was me, if I just had a clone of five of myself and that was the routesetting crew, it would not be nearly as good of a round or good of a set as if I had a bunch of different people with different perspectives and strong opinions about those perspectives on the crew and were willing to have healthy debate, healthy conflict around it. That’s the environment that I want to be in. So, I don’t want to give an answer of, “Yes, it’s design, or, “Yes, it’s art,” because I want there to be a debate. It’s both and neither at the same time, which is not an answer. But my favorite thing about routesetting is the conflict of that.
Why has it taken so long, do you think, for the climbing hold industry to embrace this idea of sustainability?…
I think that it’s twofold. It’s really hard to make, especially if we’re talking about the 90s, the type of holds that were being shaped and how intricate they were, and the emulation of real rock. It’s not cost-effective to make a hold like that in a sustainable material. So, the best way to make a hold that emulates rock is with a silicone mold and polyurethane or resin. And from what I understand, that is a really difficult thing—as far as durability and longevity—to make out of a sustainable material. So, one of the nice things about holds becoming a little more ambiguous is that it’s a lot easier to make that kind of shape in a sustainable material.
The other thing is we’re just bigger now. There’s more money in climbing now. I think that consumers have gotten used to holds that are more expensive than they’ve ever been. Like with macros and materials, we’re willing to buy these holds now because, I mean, you can see it, climbing is growing, it’s succeeding. So, okay, now we’ve got a little bit more spending money, and I think that trickles down into, “Let’s make our manufacturing more sustainable. Let’s start using better materials. Let’s start engaging with the problem of, ‘I have three gyms worth of holds in my gym and it represents three generations of holds.’” So, there are only so many homewalls that you can push those slick grips onto. And, unless you’re a brand-new gym, you’ve got a backstock of retired holds, and this is a problem that’s always been there. We’ve always known that it’s there, but we never knew—and still to a large degree don’t know—what to do with it. Because once a polyurethane hold is a climbing hold, it’s going to be that way into infinity. So, we’re not anywhere close. But with climbing growing and with people being really creative with different manufacturing types, different molding—this vacuum molding process is really cool and very exciting. We still have a long way to go.
…How much do you keep your finger on the pulse of that whole sustainability world beyond just the climbing sphere? Are you combing sustainability websites and looking for, “What’s the next big thing in that world?” Because then maybe we could put it to climbing.
I can’t say that I am combing, but it’s always there. So, materials that you can 3D print with is a bit further along. And people always ask me, “Can you 3D print a climbing hold?” And kind of, you can 3D print a master out of material that’s way more sustainable than what the end material is going to be. But that material isn’t strong enough. And I’ve seen folks make climbing holds out of recycled material that gets brought to my desk and I put a bolt in it and I can just destroy it with my impact driver.
So, it’s a really special product, a climbing hold, because in order to make it strong enough to withstand bolting onto a wall, dropping onto the mats, getting hucked into the washing room and then stored in the setting room, that’s going to be a really, really strong plastic, or a really strong fiberglass. And to be able to match both of those things is really difficult…I’ve always argued that it wouldn’t be the climbing industry that would find the golden material that’s as strong as polyurethane or as strong as fiberglass, and that it wouldn’t necessarily be folks in the climbing industry that would discover it. It would be some other huge industry.
…How do you shift that culture, so people don’t look at something that’s recycled and think, “Oh yeah, it’s maybe a little bit inferior to something that’s brand new, non-recycled”?
I try to not lead with it. So, I do a lot of hold demos, go into a gym [and say], “Hey, we’re all just going to set.” It’s a normal day, but I brought 50 holds with me, and I put them on the mats. And one of my favorite things is just watching different routesetters pick through climbing holds. It’s like watching animals at the watering hole, and they pick up an ABS hold and they’re like, “Oh, this is cool.” They’re flicking it with their finger and feeling the material, [saying], “Oh, this is really cool. What is this?” You know, “Oh, well, maybe let’s put some holds on the wall and put up a block.” So, I try and get the setter to engage with it as a hold first.
And then it’s like, “Hey, just so you know, that’s recycled.” Because if on the forefront we’re already trying to battle this bias of recycled material, I never want the value of the hold to just be the fact that it is a sustainable material. It has to be a good hold. It has to be something that people want to use. So, when you let them use it or when you get to experience it without that being the sole value of the hold, I think that goes a lot further than, “I’m simply buying this because it’s recycled.” You’ll never get that from us or hopefully from anywhere in the climbing industry, “We’re just going to sell you this because it’s recycled.” Well, if you buy something that’s recycled just for the fact that it’s recycled and then you never use it, that’s the antithesis of sustainability.
So, making recycled holds that are lit is extremely important. We’ve set with the ABS holds at a few different competitions now and in tons of gyms, and it works exactly like fiberglass, it feels exactly like fiberglass. We’ve put them through qualifier rounds with over a hundred competitors, and it doesn’t have that thing where all the sand’s scraping off, and things like this. So, it’s really well done, it’s really well made, and it actually chips less than fiberglass, which is something that I really appreciate…
…What do you think the next five or ten years will look like?…
I would like to see a polyurethane equivalent. If there’s somebody out there listening to this podcast who can make a comfy crimp out of recycled plastic, recycled polyurethane that lasts just as long and is just as durable, that would change the entire industry. And we’re not there yet.
