The Campus
Boulder, Colorado
Specs: The Campus, a bouldering-focused training facility, is expected to open in Boulder, Colorado, in the 2024/2025 winter. Majority owner Claire Gordon founded The Campus, gathering inspiration from her own youth climbing experiences and conversations with coaches, parents and other gym owners.
Gordon started Pinkpoint Training in February 2023, a traveling team of competitive youth athletes. After experiencing some pain points, such as “gym hopping and trying to find a gym that will allow an independent team to train there” and observing negative opinions of team kids held by adult gym members, Gordon said she “had just come to a head with trying to find a space for our team.” Fortunately, opening a climbing gym had been “a lifelong dream” for Gordon. Gordon grew up as a team kid and began to compete on the youth circuit in 2004, per the Pinkpoint Training website, which gave her the extra push she needed to really start looking into opening a facility.
Gordon’s vision is to create a training-focused facility that is the home of Team Pinkpoint but is not a youth-focused facility. “The main thing that [Team Pinkpoint] will influence in the build will be: Can they reach the climbs? Is there a hangboard that someone who’s five feet tall can reach?” Gordon said. “Other than that, I would really like to just have the youth team participating as active and equal members of the community, so they really aren’t receiving anything separate or needing anything different than anyone else training at a high level.” The gym will be open for “climbers with a desire to train and improve” Gordon continued, which comes with some differences from a typical commercial gym. For example, The Campus will not offer rental shoes or tailor the climbing experience to first-time climbers. “But,” Gordon added, “you can get into [climbing] somewhere else, and then when you’re ready come see us at The Campus.”
As a training-focused center for athletes of all ages, the amenities were chosen with training in mind. The gym will feature hangboards, weight training options, and basic fitness equipment. In addition to the 50 feet of bouldering problems, climbers can train on Kilter, Tension and Decoy Boards. Gordon noted The Campus will be the first gym in the West/Midwest with a Decoy Board—all other boards being located along the East Coast and in Bend, Oregon, at the time of this article. Eric Sanchez will head the routesetting team and will set boulders under a color circuit that does not correspond to V grades.
The building that will house The Campus is a 4000-square-foot empty warehouse located across the street from Avery Brewing, with tall walls and enough space for Gordon’s vision. Boulder was an ideal location for Gordon because it is where she and many of the Team Pinkpoint families live. Gordon also believes the city needs a gym “that can accommodate the number of people in Boulder who are climbing at a really high level,” without a focus on first-timers or beginning climbers. “We’d really like to create a space that is just for the very committed,” Gordon summarized.
Walls: Rockwerx
Flooring: Asana
CRM Software: Approach
Website: www.thecampusclimbingandtraining.com
Instagram: @The_Campus_Boulder
In Their Words: “I would really like to create a space where athletes can just be a part of the community and they can be seen as members, and they can project with the 20-year-old college kid and the 40-year-old dude who’s in there after his tech job; and really a space that is open to anyone who is interested in training at a high level, and not having our kids have this tag of ‘birthday party kids’ or ‘the annoying team kids.’” – Claire Gordon, The Campus Founder and Majority Owner
Naomi is a personal trainer and a routesetter who has also worked at climbing gyms as a youth team coach. After starting college at Colorado State University in 2017, she wanted to make new friends and found climbing, fell in love, and now climbing dictates most of what she does. Naomi earned a bachelor’s degree in Ecosystem Science & Sustainability, and when not climbing she enjoys baking, gardening and crafting.
