On this episode of The Impact Driver Podcast, host Holly Chen interviews Andy Nelson. Andy has been climbing since 1998, and he became the first paid routesetter at Vertical Endeavors in Minnesota around the mid 2000s. In the routesetting arena, he’s practically done it all, from commercial setting and running a setting crew to setting for comps all the way up to the divisional level. He worked for Nicros Volumes for a while and then, in his words, “went rogue” and “started shaping for everybody and their brother.” Andy has also seen every stage of the hold manufacturing process, from being on the ground in a factory, pouring holds, to design and branding work. Now, Andy owns and operates Method Grips.
Andy and Holly started by diving into his memories of the “good old days,” or maybe the “dark ages,” some might say—a time when routesetters were paid by route and members did not have the luxury of choosing between gyms. They also talked about how Andy has witnessed the industry change over the years, some of the shifts that have allowed setters to do their job more safely and sustainably, and the potential of more oversight from government agencies in the future. Holly and Andy debated about whether routesetting is an art, and they got into some of the nitty-gritty details of holds, shaping materials, and the “evolutionary arms race” between routesetters and hold shapers.
Thank you TRUBLUE and Strati Climbing for your support!
And thank you Devin Dabney for your music!
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
05:10 – The Average Mid 2000s Setting Day
07:53 – Pay Per Route/Boulder
08:58 – Quantity vs. Quality
11:32 – Gyms in Minnesota
15:59 – Standard Routesetting Equipment of the Mid 2000s
20:40 – Constants Over Time
21:52 – Is Routesetting an Art?
26:00 – What Makes a Good Routesetter?
30:08 – Women in the Routesetting Field
39:07 – Hold Shaping Evolution
43:52 – The Next Big Push in Hold/Volume Evolution
46:31 – How Big Can Holds Get?
49:27 – Foam and Texture
53:29 – Hold Durability
57:45 – Changing Textures
01:01:07 – Andy’s Drill of Choice
01:03:39 – Closing
Abridged Transcript
…You told me some stories about your early routesetting days, and to my understanding, you started as the first paid routesetter at Vertical Endeavors. I’m wondering whether you can run me through what an average routesetting day was like back in the day.
Well, it literally is completely different than how it’s done now. Prior to me convincing Vertical Endeavors to pay me hourly to do the work, everyone was a contract setter there. They were paid by the route or the problem that they put up, and that was a pittance. It was just a very small amount of money. And if you did enough of that work, then they might kick you back with a free membership as well. So, consequently, the gym had tons and tons of setters, and they would just filter through. Somebody would come and set for a couple months, and then they’d take off on a climbing trip and be gone for a couple months. So, what ended up happening with me is they brought me in to basically lead a crew. I had, I can’t even remember the exact number, but it was some absurd number—like 50, 60+ routesetters on my payroll who I was paying per route or per problem, and I was managing them. What we ended up doing—to be efficient and to actually get turnover in the gym and get routes up and get problems up—is the gym would close early on Sunday nights, and I would bring in as many setters as I could possibly get ahold of, and we would just totally redo giant sections of the gym. Like, we would reset a third of the gym in one night. I’d have 30, 40, even 50 people hanging from ropes, resetting walls. And it was my job to make sure that chaos was under as much control as possible…
How much did you get paid per route or boulder? Do you remember?
I don’t remember. I mean, you have to remember, this is 2008, 2009, so it’s quite a while ago now. And I want to say it was less than $10 a boulder problem, and it was probably less than $20 a route. So, it was not a lot of money. And when you’re a new setter, we’d set for four or six hours on a Sunday night, and a new setter might get up one route or a couple boulder problems. They’re putting in—running around the gym trying to figure this out—five, six, seven hours, and they’re making $20. So, it was super challenging to not only recruit talent, but to keep talent. And that’s why I had such a huge roster…We were just desperately trying to keep people around. There was really no incentive to try to be professional and try to do it for a living.
…But with that system for the experienced setters who can set more efficiently, wouldn’t that incentivize them to set quantity over quality?…
That’s exactly what happened, and that’s the way I operated back then, too. Before I got hired on hourly, I would go in on a day off and I’d put up 25 boulder problems in four hours—just slapping stuff on the wall because it was cash. That was one of my big responsibilities in the role I was in, was to quality control. So, I didn’t actually set during those times when I had these big crews running. I was literally just running around and forerunning problems and giving feedback and making and forcing the quality control. Otherwise, it just wasn’t going to happen. It was just slapping holds on the wall and calling it good. It was a different era then, though. It was literally the only gym in a metropolitan area of 5 million people. It was like, “Where else are you going to go as a climber?”…
…So, in more than a decade since you were setting a Vertical Endeavors, a lot obviously has changed. I was wondering whether you could run me through your standard equipment. Did anyone have an impact driver? Did anyone wear safety glasses? Were there sleds on ladders? Your laugh tells me no.
Yeah, for me, it was herding cats the whole time. And it was kind of always just controlled chaos. Most people didn’t use—I mean, this is when impact drivers were just starting to come into fashion. So, about a third of the crew actually had an impact driver. Everybody else was using T-wrenches. I remember I had probably 20 or 30 T-wrenches in my setting kit just because I’d have to borrow them out to everybody, since they didn’t have tools. There was no way the gym, at that point, was going to provide tools for setters. That was on you. You had to bring all your own gear. As far as safety equipment, like earplugs and eye protection, nobody even thought about that kind of stuff. That wasn’t even—it was flip flops and no shirts and hanging from a rope and old, beat-up rental harnesses.
It was terrible. It was, in every way imaginable, terrible. So, that’s the one thing I’m so glad to see has evolved and professionalized, just the whole safety aspect of routesetting. Because when we were doing it back then, it was chaos. You’d be pitching holds off the wall, just throwing them on the ground and people running around everywhere. It was a miracle that nobody in my tenure got severely hurt because safety just was not a priority at all. It wasn’t even a thought for most of us. It was more about, “Let’s just get this stuff off the wall and get the new stuff on the wall as fast as possible.”
…Do you think routesetting is an art?…
…I think there’s an art to it, but it’s a functional art. And I think the same goes for shaping and a lot of other aspects of the climbing industry. But I think it’s art to a certain extent. But the more we professionalize, the more it’s going to drift away from being an art…
I refer to a lot of things as “functional art.” If you’re going to try to liken it to something that everybody understands, it’s more like architecture or something in that realm—where you can build a basic, simple house that is totally functional, or you can build this beautiful facade and fancy windows and add a lot to it to make it a thing of art. So, I think at its core, routesetting is a job and it’s a function, but it can be art if it’s done right and done well.
…I want to talk about your hold shaping, and I want to talk about what you’ve seen in the evolution of holds—not just the shapes or the size, but the materials and how things went from almost two-dimensional setting to this crazy 3D stuff that we see, now that we can build with volumes, change entire features with big macros, and make people do moves like mantling that might be really hard to do on, say, baseball-sized holds. Talk about what you’ve seen in terms of trends and how we got to where we are now.
When I first started making holds, it was still PE, it was still polyester resin. And that had its limitations. When I look back on it and what I’ve seen over the years, I think the evolution has really been driven by routesetters pushing the envelope, routesetters wanting to evolve and to create new things and create new movement and create new styles. I think the routesetters’ desire to be more creative and to create new things has forced the climbing holds [sector] to evolve and to start trying new things, start bringing in new ideas, new materials, new products.
So, we see people wanting to start climbing more three-dimensionally. Well, in order to climb more three-dimensionally, we have to try something to make the walls different, make the angles different. “Well, what’s that?” Well, we’ll bolt on things. “Well, what can we bolt on?” Well, let’s bolt on big chunks of plywood put together. “Well, that’s really hard to do when you have cement walls.” So, we evolved away from cement walls to plywood walls to make bolting volumes more efficient. “How do we make bigger holds? Because people like big holds.” Well, we need a different material…
As hold makers, we’re just trying to meet the demands of the routesetters through innovation. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. So, I’ve seen all kinds of crazy stuff that’s just failed miserably over the years—like materials that didn’t work, or design ideas that just didn’t work…
What do you think that next biggest push is going to be in holds and volume evolution? Where do you see it going?
Well, we’re now getting to the point with a lot of the materials where we’re reaching their limits. Like, we know how big a PU hold can be before it becomes unreasonable, both cost-wise and weight-wise and so on and so forth. We also know what we can and can’t do with fiberglass. So, I think we’re now kind of starting to dabble again in new materials. The next big new wave is what’s called vacuum-formed plastic, where it’s basically a big giant sheet of plastic that is vacuumed over a form that makes your hold, and then it’s textured like a fiberglass hold or a wood volume would be. I think that is where the next big push is going to be, where a lot of designers and developers of climbing holds are going to put a lot of focus, but it has its limitations as well. So, I think right now we’re kind of evolving to a point with climbing holds where the right answer is multiple answers…
…I’m wondering what you know about the evolution of texture, whether it’s textured paint or spray-on texture or, I don’t know, glued sandpaper to holds.
…To kind of break it down simply, texture on PE and PU holds comes directly from the original foam design. So, whatever texture that foam had is the texture that you’re going to get on the finished product. And that’s a negative texture. So, what you’re seeing is the bubbles that are in the foam are what cause or what give you the texture. And that can vary based on the type of foam that you use. That’s why a hold released and shaped by me at Method could feel completely different than a hold shaped and released by brand “X,” even though it’s produced at the same factory. It’s because we used a different foam to carve the original.
…I do want to end on kind of a more funny, light-hearted question. I need you to defend the drill that you use against all other drills.
Oh, geez. Well, I’ll start by saying that I started with wrenches way back in the day, so I still set occasionally with wrenches. I currently run a Makita Soft Impact like most people, I think. And the only argument you can make for the Makita Soft Impact that is the final verdict is the fact that it’s a third as loud as any other impact on the market. So, noise wise, I won’t ever use anything else ever again. Once I bought my first soft, I was like, “Alright, this is it. This is all I’m ever going to use.”…
Holly grew up in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Now she lives in Denver where she reports, writes and routesets. Beyond the Climbing Business Journal, her writing has been published by Alpinist Magazine, Climbing Magazine, Gym Climber and Sharp End Publishing. Holly’s motto has always been: “keep it interesting.”
Read our interview with Holly: Storytelling Through Movement
