PLASTIC PARADISE: The Adventure Center - Edinburgh, Scotland

In Scotland, they take their climbing pretty seriously. The Highlands have been a proving ground for Britain's top mountaineers for centuries and the tradition lives on through a younger generation who push the limits of newer fads like bouldering and dry-tooling. In fact, you'll be surprised to know this tiny country that occupies the northern third of the United Kingdom is home to both the biggest ice and rock climbing gyms on the planet, and they're only 120 miles apart. The Ice Factor, with its huge refrigerated ice chamber, is indeed impressive; but the Adventure Center - a climbing arena, six stories tall with 22,000 square-feet of climbing surface and more than 175 different lead and top-rope routes, is simply breathtaking. And it all started with a couple of climbers, an architect and a giant hole in the ground.

During the mid-nineties a quarry called Ratho sat derelict on the suburban outskirts of Edinburgh. It had long been tapped of any money-making potential and was now just a giant scar among a rolling landscape with little development. At that same time Scottish climbers Duncan McCallum and Rab Anderson were hatching plans to open a climbing gym and they were wondering where to put it. They knew it would have to be something ambitious and totally groundbreaking - something that would match the enthusiasm and tradition of Britain's accomplished climbing community. What they didn't know was that they were about to become part of the biggest indoor-climbing project ever.

While Rab and Duncan compiled crude napkin-sketches and kicked the tires on a few potential buildings, an architect named David Taylor contacted them with a proposal. David was a climber who ran his own property development firm, and he always wanted to design a climbing gym; he was exactly what Rab and Duncan needed to take their idea to the next level. But it was one of David's non-climbing friends who made the ludicrous suggestion that would change everything. "Why not just put a roof over a quarry?" the friend asked.
So Duncan, Rab, and David, clutching faith and a huge bank loan, took a flyer and bought Ratho quarry with an eye on somehow turning it into a climbing gym.

Eight years and 40 million dollars later the Adventure Center was born. It has all the intimacy of an airplane hangar and its scale is so great it gives a sense of climbing outside. Several huge walls of exposed real rock jut out beside the plastic, and once they're finished hanging bolts later this year it will become the only gym in the world with indoor sport climbs on real rock. It is the most spectacular climbing gym ever built.

A glass elevator whisks people up from the huge third-floor gear shop to the fifth-floor bar and restaurant, then back down again to the second-floor weight and cardio gym. It has a state-of-the-art lecture theatre that hosts well-known touring climbers and a training gym for the British National Judo team. They're even putting the finishing touches on accommodation facilities because, due to the gym's proximity to Edinburgh airport, it handily doubles as a conference facility (a surprising portion of the gym's revenue comes from corporate get-togethers and getaways).

There's so much going on at the Adventure Center that dozens of first-timers and non-climbers from all over the UK walk through the front doors every day to dine at the four-star restaurant, grab after-work drinks and even just to gape at its enormity.

But swanky restaurants and glass elevators aside, it's the climbing that has put this gym on the map. Scotland's climbers are a serious bunch and there are routes to match. Most of the lines are lead-only for those who are comfortable scaling sustained, overhanging walls that top out somewhere near 100ft (you know that feeling you get when you've just led the gnarliest, tallest route at your local gym, your forearms are pumped, and you're relieved to be leaning back and lowered? Now imagine if you had another 50ft of climbing to do). And for this it faithfully recreates the long outdoor sport climbs you find in places like Owens River Gorge or Red Rocks.

At the same time, the Adventure Center's tallest route is also one of its easiest and can be climbed on top-rope by just about anyone. All levels are catered for, even in the gym's bouldering area where there are three 12ft-high free-standing modules that give it a mini-Fountainbleau feel. There are even plans afoot for an indoor via ferrata - the Euro Alpine routes that are full of steel cables and ladders that allow non-climbers to access some of the same airy mountain positions that climbers do with greater safety - and international competitions are regularly held on the very severe-looking special competition wall. With its technical variety and route quality, it's no wonder the Adventure Center is Scotland's official national rock climbing venue.

Interestingly enough, indoor climbing is a controversial concept in Britain. UK climbing ethics are so bogged down in tradition that bolts, sport climbing, bouldering, and other newer incarnations of mountain sports have yet to be totally embraced by the mainstream climbing crowd. Rab Anderson is often asked how he feels about the new shift in thinking and he seems to take a more pragmatic stance than most.

"I'm an outdoor person and I would much rather climb outside," he says "but gyms will encourage people to learn how to do something they can then take outdoors. A long time ago I was asked by some friends how they could get their kids into climbing, and I could only tell them to wait until the kids were 18 so they could go down to the pub where all the climbers hang out. But now that's what a good climbing gym can do."
Rab, Duncan, and David's vision has now finally been realized and the finished product has made climbing history. But the years of planning and building weren't without their problems and the Adventure Center still struggles to stay afloat financially. "Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as simple as putting a roof over the quarry," Rab says. "There was tons of work to be done and a lot of hidden costs that doubled our original budget. We did have a bit of help from the government, but most of the funding we secured ourselves.

"The quarry you see now is vastly different than when we started. When David had a look and said he thought he could do something with it, we were surprised; he's the real visionary behind it. The Adventure Center of today far surpasses anything we envisaged and we certainly never imagined something that huge. In the end, I think we've built the best climbing facility in the world."

There are several top climbing gyms scattered throughout Britain, but none have made an impact quite like the Adventure Center in Edinburgh. Any American climber who finds themselves anywhere near Scotland must make the detour to climb its impossibly long routes and experience everything it has to offer. Even if you're nowhere near the UK, it may even be worth a special trip. Catch a flight into London and a train to Edinburgh, spend your days cranking the longest indoor routes you've ever done in the most spectacular climbing gym ever built, and spend your nights swilling pints and eating haggis with forearms that feel like they're going to burst. Just don't forget to wear something under your kilt, it gets cold in Scotland.

The Adventure Center
Edinburgh, Scotland
011 44 131 333 6333
www.adventurescotland.com