The “Indoor” climbing is experiencing a quick ascent. The rooms that offer, between two climbing, moments of letting go around a drink or a meal specifically seduce young men.
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On Monday night of October, within a few minutes of the Porte d’Orleans, in Paris. Slippers hanging on the backpack, the clouds of thirties rush at regular intervals at the entrance of the climbing room Arkose Didot. Green plants in profusion, wooden furniture and graff tropical welcome these urban Tarzan, who came to make their block session, that is to say without baudrier, neither carabiner nor rope. We climb here on limited walls at 4.5 meters high, constelped with sockets of different colors and highlights. No need for learning, safety rules are simple, and drop-out falls by crash pads, large soft soil mats.
Every day, 250 climbers, from 7 am to midnight, departs to the assault of their artificial summit of 14 e arrondissement. As often, that night there are as many people on the walls and the bottom of the carpets. Nose in the air, men and women spiders in Lycra look at each other, give themselves advice, encourage themselves. “Advance your foot on the blue and grows on your legs to propel you up”, explains a athlete at rest at a beginner stuck on his wall.
To learn, train, have fun, meet, blockparks have become in a few years an appointment “afterwork” popular with young urban people. A craze that saw the hatching of the rooms and the multiplication of practitioners. “More than twenty rooms have emerged from the ground during the health crisis, and as much should be opened in 2022”, welcomes Ghislain Billet, President of the Union of Climbing Rooms (Udse) and managing two spaces in Strasbourg. In total, three million people would push the doors every year of some 200 French rooms.
Not embarrassing to come alone
If the block climb seduces as many young people (18-35 years old), mostly masculine (between 60% and 70% depending on the rooms), it is not only because it harmoniously muscle the body , for a relatively affordable price (15 euros on average at the meeting, a fifty of euros the monthly subscription, if not less, depending on the hours). The activity, very friendly, meets the need to socialize. “It is the most collective individual sports,” says Belmont Gregory, 45, one of the co-founders and associates of Arkose (300 employees, 20 rooms in France). “The discussion naturally starts on carpets, you really have to want to meet anyone.”
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