Rock Climbing Camps for the Sole

Kids love climbing, to say the least. Visit any park or playground and see: slides; ladders; ropes; monkey bars; animal sculptures; rocks, both natural and artificial depending on the locale; and, in facilities that have been renovated in the last decade or so, there are even designed climbing walls with appropriately sized hand and footholds. Good job, 21st century play equipment designer!

All that said, what about the kid who wants to climb more often, or try different or higher or more challenging routes? You can’t just send them to Central Park—there are only so many rocks there and sometimes it rains or gets icy. Even in good weather, you can’t tell them to go climb the fire escape. Some kids, like the waifs and wastrels of “Stuy Town” don’t even have fire escapes.

Enter perhaps the most remarkable urban fitness phenomenon of our time—not just Our Town but internationally too—the indoor climbing gym. For most Manhattanites this is a necessity but even if one next to Inwood Park, climbers can find far better hours, weather, variety and safety—not to mention equipment, instruction and myriad amenities—in the great indoors.

Happily, despite the challenges posed by Manhattan real estate, our fair and slender island features a number of fine indoor climbing gyms—all of which offer extensive programs for children, including summer camps.

On the Upper East, the destination is the Vital Climbing Gym, at 1506 Lexington Avenue, near 96th Street and, conveniently, the 96th Street Branch of the NYPL. If like many who take an interest in climbing, your kid can’t wait until summer, Vital offers numerous one, two and three days a week climbing program, with experienced coaches, year round. If your child—girls and boys like are ardent climbers— has the interest, these are well worth checking out and provide a great complement to more traditional ball sport activities.

Come summer, Vital offers two levels of summer camp that run in one-week sessions from mid-July to mid-August. Rec Camp, for ages 5-10, includes not just ample time on the climbing walls, but arts and crafts, games and outside time. Advanced Camp for ages 11-17, is similar but more physically challenging, and includes concentrated work on technique and fitness.

Vital also has a West Harlem location at 3225 Broadway at 129th Street, which has youth programs but no summer camps, and a newly opened Lower East Side location on Broome Street, that, while it presently has no children’s programs, is open to older kids and their parents.

On the Upper West Side, the name is Central Rock Gym at 21 West End Avenue near 60th Street. The numbers tell only part of the story: 12,000 square foot facility with 10,000 square feet of climbing—including 400 linear feet of bouldering— plus 2,000 feet of other fitness and training space (yoga, weights, calisthenics, hang boards).

When it comes to kids, Central Rock gets it, inviting parents to “send your kids to us so they can get all the constructive (and sometimes destructive) energy out in the gym instead of your apartment!”

To that end, Central Rock offers excellent February midwinter and April spring break programs for kids 7-12—including highly welcome full day extensions to 5:30 p.m.—as well as a thrilling seven week summer break program for the same age group. Open to all climbing levels, days here include bouldering, top rope climbing, obstacle course challenges, team building games and more.

Last but not least there’s Chelsea Piers, which in addition to the dazzlingly diverse range of recreation and fitness activities it’s well known for, also features an 11,000 square foot climbing gym.

Though Chelsea Piers doesn’t offer an all-day summer climbing camp, it offers numerous youth climbing programs throughout the year and their summer Ninja / Parkour camp does have rock climbing components. Check it out today.

Also, if your daughter or son is old enough, parents of young climbers are can bond with their “youngins” by watching the two greatest climbing movie ever made together, Clint Eastwood’s R-rated 1975 spy thriller, The Eiger Sanction and the scarifying 2018 Alex Honnold versus El Capitan documentary, Free Solo.