After moving here to Tofino about eight years ago, due to a climbing injury, I started to get the itch to begin climbing again.

I started to ask around town about the level of interest the residents would have in a climbing gym. Spending a few winters here myself, I know how it can get boring and a bit monotonous during all the rain, wind, early sunsets, and sometimes lousy waves. I realized that if there was another activity to do here other than the obvious that people would take to it. The Alternative is my solution for being able to climb, surf, and work (legally) in the same place.

At the beginning, when I started to look into the process and the entire picture, I wished that somebody else with deep pockets would just do it instead so I didn’t have to be responsible. But day after day nobody did. I started to get questions from random people asking if I was going to open the climbing gym. Slowly I kept chipping away at the project, putting ideas down on paper, googling “how to write a business plan” and “how to build a climbing wall”, and looking in the phone book calling different establishments asking for tips and advice.

At one point I found myself laid off. I started to search for funding with a chopped up business plan and a scale model of what I wanted the final product to resemble. Soon enough I got introduced to the fine people at Community Futures and they took my hand and taught me how to get it all together and properly solicit investment. Once funded, a few of us got to banging nails and putting it all together — all the while wearing a cast over a broken wrist from skateboarding.

After a whirlwind of insurance, building permits, building code, engineers, city planners, council meetings and zoning issues a whole whack of hurdles were hopped and I had a climbing gym that blew my hair back.

I wanted to get on it right away but I had to be gentle with my newly cast-free wrist. Opening day was July 11, and everything was free — smokies and drinks for everyone and enough buddies there to help out with belaying people as they gave the new toy a try. Other than a few drops of ketchup on the nice new mats, the day was a great success with little kids blasting all over the walls with their parents waiting in turn like groms themselves.

The Westcoaster publication came by and had a few words with me about what and why I did what I did. They published that article a few days later. Since then there has been a bunch of people making climbing their main discipline or even just something to get their mind off reality.

The types of climbing offered here is top-roping and bouldering. For top-roping one must take a safety course on how to handle the ropes and belay. For those who just want to work on the moves, bouldering requires no ropes or harnesses, just the moves and you.

Written by John Robson

John Robson. Owner of The Alternative - Tofino’s Indoor Climbing Gym
681 Industrial Way Unit B, Tofino B.C. 250-266-1420