ROUTE SETTING PHILOSOPHY
an interview with Moses Potter, our Head Route Setter
A lot of people don’t understand how much time and effort goes into the route setting at Planet Granite, or that we have one person who coordinates all the routesetting: quality, layout, density & a team of setters who travel to each gym to set . Moses Potter is the Head Route Setter for all our gyms , and I managed to corner him for a few minutes to chat with me about setting.
How long have you been setting?
I’ve been setting off and on since 1998. But I’ve been doing it more or less full time for about 4 years now.
So how did you get into setting?
I think my story is similar to a lot of setters. It was one of those things where I was a climber who spent copious amounts of time in my local gym, and after a while started getting tired of waiting for the new problems to be set (we’d burn through them pretty fast). My friends and I, being a bit stronger than many of the members around us, just started making up our own sequences in the bouldering area. Of course, we were training for what we thought was the perfect boulder problem back then, so our moves tended to be progressively harder and harder til you got to the top of the problem which was always capped by the mandatory dyno to the lip. I’d say my setting style has developed a bit since then.
You mentioned setting style, is there a certain style you look for in setting at Planet Granite?
I don’t try to control a setter’s style so much as their overall setting philosophy. A setter’s style is their own thing, it’s part of the creative process that keeps them psyched on putting up new stuff on the walls. Style is a bit of an artistic thing, and I think each setter is entitled to his or her own style. Plus, customers enjoy climbing different styles of routesetting. However, since we are setting for a wide variety of customers, who run the gamut of physical stature, and we are ultimately responsible for creating a product that those myriad customers will want to repeat potentially many times before they are taken down, there are certain parameters that all PG setters must follow.
Could you describe a few of those parameters?
I am of the setting philosophy that gym climbs should “flow.” I like climbs to have friendly holds (i.e. holds that will not potentially lead to injury), no huge moves, no stopper cruxes, and that are either consistently difficult or progressively more difficult toward the top. Generally speaking, a well-set route should make every climber use the same hand sequence to the top of the route. There might be some bump holds in there that smaller climbers use, and some bigger climbers skip, but the general hand sequence should be the same for every climber. Obviously there will be exceptions to this, but it’s one thing we try for at PG.
Interesting. Now how do you know when you’ve set something that might need to be changed?
That’s part of the forerunning process. We generally set as a team led by a gym-specific foreman, and forerunning, the process of checking the routes for quality and safety, is one of the more important parts of our setting day.
Forerunning. So, you mean you get to climb on the job? That sounds pretty good.
Yea, it’s one of the perks of doing our work, which is also pretty physically taxing. However, when forerunning we’re checking for loose holds, cracked holds, “reachy” moves, safe clips, ascertaining the difficulty of the climb, and checking for overall quality of the product, so forerunning is more like work than play. I try to have a route forerun by two different setters to ensure quality and ascertain an accurate grade.
Whoa. OK, so the guys setting actually need to be pretty decent climbers to be able to do all of this at the end of the day.
I’m pretty happy with the crew I’ve put together over the last year or two. Our setters are, for the most part, dedicated climbers who care a lot about their work, and the feedback customers give them. They also crank. I think right now we’ve got five setters who’ve bouldered V12 outdoors, and nearly all of us climb at least 5.12 on up to 5.14.
How do you know routes and boulder problems are graded consistently? What does your team do to keep our grades consistent in all the gyms?
Route grades are, ultimately, just a suggestion. They’re an educated suggestion, but a suggestion none the less. Grades are meant to keep climbers safe. So, if you see a route graded, say, 5.11b, you have an idea of how serious the movement will be on that route, before you leave the ground. That said, we grade routes and boulder problems four days a week and have a pretty solid opinion on the difficulty of a climb if executed correctly.
We base our grades primarily on routes and boulder problems we’ve climbed outdoors that are solid for their grade. We also grade routes and boulder problems based on what’s currently in the gym. If a route is graded .10d, it’s been on the wall for two months, many members have climbed it and confirmed the grade, then that’s a good benchmark route with which to compare new routes against. Now, everyone has a different opinion about route grades. A .10d for one climber might feel .10c to another, or .11a to a third. If three of my route setters evaluate a climb and they suggest the grades 10c, 10d, and 10d, respectively, for one particular climb, I’ll generally go with the .10d grade. If I still question the grade of the route after getting the route setters’ opinions, I’ll have one more setter climb it and give their opinion as well. We rarely have to climb a route more than two or three times to accurately gauge the difficulty. Occasionally, we’re wrong. Guess what? If we set twenty five routes in one day, and everyone’s been setting and climbing three days in a row, we might actually make a grading mistake. That’s OK. The mistake is generally cleared up within a week or two by one of us reclimbing the route, or through member feedback, and a new grade is given to the climb. But I have to say, if the general opinion of members and clients is that a climb is within one letter grade of the suggestion on the start box, I’m happy.
The fact that many of my route setters work together weekly at all three Planet Granite gyms ensures that our grading is pretty consistent. Both myself and Art, PG’s assistant head route setter, also work at all three gyms weekly.
How often does your crew set in our gyms? Do you have a schedule? How long do routes and boulder problems stay up?
We set at both Sunnyvale and San Francisco on Mondays, Sunnyvale on Tuesdays, Belmont on Wednesdays, and San Francisco on Thursdays. Occasionally this schedule changes due to the climbing competitions we host, but by and large those are our setting days at each of the gyms.
Our gyms maintain an 8-10 week rotation, meaning that the oldest routes and boulder problems should be around 8-10 weeks old. However, climbing competitions, where we set across a large area, might disrupt our standard rotation.
You mentioned “reachiness” earlier. What makes a route “reachy”?
Reachiness is a funny term. And I think it’s one that gets thrown around with a little too much regularity. Reachiness in route setting is not simply a matter of pulling harder to execute a move, it is a matter of height dependence to execute a move. A move that is significantly easier if one is taller is reachy. Many people confuse having to bend their arms and pull hard with reachiness. Bending your arms is part of climbing. Sometimes you have to flex some muscle, especially once you get into the 5.11 range. We try to avoid making routes or boulder problems difficult simply by the length of the moves. Usually if there’s a big move, there’s also an extra bump hand hold, or an extra foot hold that will help smaller climbers do the movement at roughly the same difficulty as a taller climber.
I don’t want to take up too much of your time but I think PG climbers might be interested in knowing why we use colored holds AND tape to mark routes in our gyms. Why not just one system or the other?
Colored holds are great for setting if you have space on the wall. They are easier to identify from all sides, make the walls look cleaner, and are much easier to set. However, there are only so many colors you can use on a wall before they start getting difficult to differentiate. Thus, when we are putting up a high number of routes or boulder problems on one wall, we use tape. Tape allows you to set walls more densely. It also starts to look bad after a few weeks, so we avoid using it as much as possible.
Lastly, how do the setters determine what difficulty of routes to put on each wall? Is it random?
I keep a tally of all the routes and boulder problems we have at PG, and what grades we currently have. The gym foreman lays out routes in the morning according to what I think we need more of in the gym, what grades would suit the terrain being set, etc. The setters get to choose which routes they set, but their choices are guided a fair amount by what I’ve already determined we need set that day. You might not see these guys or realize how much they’re doing on a regular basis, but routesetting at PG is a lot more organized than you might think!
Thanks for taking some time out of your day for this.
Any time, Steph.
Stephanie Ko is the manager of PG Sunnyvale. When she’s not training in the gym, she can be found sport climbing at her favorite local and not so local crags.