High-Steppe Climbing Center
Yakima, WA
Specs: 13,000-square-foot building, more than 7,000 square feet of which will be climbable surface. Lead climbing, auto-belay climbing, and bouldering will be offered, along with yoga. The gym will also include a MoonBoard, a campus board, a hangboard station, a space with general fitness equipment, a birthday party area, and locker rooms with showers.
The gym will aim to help bridge the gap between beginners who enter for the first time and those members interested in transitioning to outdoor climbing. To that point, guiding and mentorship programs might eventually be offered to teach stewardship and safe climbing skills (encouraged by the stewardship already being promoted by the Yakima Climbing Scene, a climbing coalition in the area). The gym will also focus on youth programming.
The space in which High-Steppe will reside is part of an old window-manufacturing facility that was repurposed into a sports-inspired complex. The complex includes other facilities with indoor soccer, ninja courses, a trampoline park, and a gymnastics area. The climbing center’s name—High-Steppe—is a play on the climbing movement (high-step) and shrub-steppe, the ecosystem at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains where the gym will be located.
Walls: Vertical Solutions
Flooring: Habit Flooring
CRM Software: Rock Gym Pro
Website: highsteppeclimbing.com
Instagram: @highsteppeclimbing
In Their Words: “Aiming to be a climbing center and not just a gym, we want to create a community around all-things climbing. We want this to help people achieve their climbing goals, whether that’s having fun in the gym, reaching new levels of fitness through terrain and training, participating in a competition team, or learning and applying new skill sets in a safe way outside. And we have been using a tag line I developed during my years climbing out of my truck. I wrote it on my shoes to keep my priorities in check, and we feel it is in line with our goals as a gym: Safe. Fun. Send…in that order.”
—Michael Roy, Co-Owner
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