Words and Photos by Nathan Welton

BUILDING
1,000: Square footage of warehouse
14.5: Height of warehouse, in feet
1,450: Square footage of climbing terrain
2,500: Number of holds
40: Degrees the hardest wall is overhung

FINANCES/MATERIALS
$15,000: Total startup costs
$4,000: Cost of steel alone
6,000: Pounds of steel
80: Sheets of plywood
3,000: Number of t-nuts
$800: Monthly rent

MEMBERS
30: Members at the start
65: Members after six months
100+: Members projected after a year
$25: Average monthly dues
24: Hours open per day
Climbers can be pretty resourceful. They can stick to inverted glass, open beer bottles with carabiners and stretch a thousand dollars into righteous year-long parties. They'll live on beans and rice and stale water for months on end without complaints, as long as they're preoccupied with a few sick lines. So it's only fitting that a few 20-somethings - climbers, of course - in the sleepy California town of San Luis Obispo managed to build one of the state's best bouldering gyms with 6,000 pounds of steel, 80 sheets of plywood and a hell of a lot of sweat.

Dubbed the SLO-Op, the gym is the phoenix that rose from the ashes of a bohemian co-op woody tucked away in a mini storage facility. The new gym is a professional jaw-dropper, but it stays true to its roots: all 3,000 holds and 1,500 square feet of terrain are stuffed into an industrial warehouse next to a cabinet maker's workshop. Its birth and infancy had been frustrating and exciting, but its growth is emblematic of what the climbing lifestyle is all about; enthusiasm, community, elbow grease and not a lot of cash can conspire to create great things.
In 2003, San Luis Obispo climber Yishai Horowitz returned from a trip to New Zealand where he'd trained in a small co-op gym in Christchurch. "It wasn't anything spectacular, but I liked the concept of it - a group of climbers getting together and improving their abilities and sharing routes with each other," he says. "That's one of the biggest problems with home gyms - it's only you setting the routes and you're not challenging yourself with other peoples' lines." He proposed a similar gym to his friends, who thought he was crazy. Undeterred, he showed the owners of an Alamo mini storage a climbing magazine and convinced them to let him build a small gym in a unit. The rent was a paltry $240 a month, but climbers enjoyed extended hours. Gradually, the SLO locals started to believe in the scheme. During the two months of construction, donors left wood, holds and even 400 square feet of foam for the floor. It became a small, homely, and cheap place to climb - not to mention fun. It was also immensely convenient for desk jockeys who needed a place to stay fit during the winter. Anyone could show up after work, drop in a CD and set a new route. Needed to train on pure slopers? You screwed them on and taped them up. The concept of a glossy climbing gym with its yuppies and bad techno was completely alien. As the gym matured, its founders opened a bank account in its name and secured industry sponsorships from major industry companies. The SLO-Op even began hosting comps, complete with tables of schwag and prizes and entrants from hundreds of miles away. In short order, the gym became the spot for lengthy sessions and heinous pumpfests - and that went on for more than a year.