Here's my twelve year old son's impression of our time at High Point.
My whole family went to High Point Climbing and Fitness for our Gotcha Day, to celebrate the day we adopted my little brothers. High Point is a great place to climb. It has a lot of climbing walls, and it’s not too expensive. High Point is the perfect place to go if you are a young child or a strong adult. The best things about High Point are that it’s a big place, it’s in a very convenient location, and it has many different levels of climbing. Our family stayed there for about three hours and everyone enjoyed climbing the whole time.
PICNIC? no
SWIMSUIT? no
COST?
Adult $16
Child 10 & Under /Personnel/Senior$14
Plus $5 each for climbing gear
If you have an aquarium membership, there is a discount. There are also coupons available through school coupon booklets.
PLAYGROUND? It is one big play ground!
AUTHOR'S RATING? four out of five stars!
HOURS? 10am-6pm
Closed Major Holidays
High Point Climbing and Fitness is in a huge building. It has an entrance room, a kid room, a pit, a bouldering area, and lots of other walls. The pit has the highest walls because they start lower. The kid room has at least fifteen walls and a small bouldering area. Last, but not least, it has several outside walls climbing up the side of the building. All of these things are bigger, taller, wider, and more spacious than they even seem. When I was there, I climbed walls in the kid room, the pit, and even the outside walls. I think my favorite was the outside walls because they’re so tall but not as hard as the ones in the pit.
High Point is right in the middle of Chattanooga. There is a parking garage right above it and restaurants all around it. For dinner the night we went, we ate at a pizza place called Mellow Mushroom that was right next door. There is even a movie theater about a block away. Best of all, the building is just the right shape for lots of climbing walls. If you live or visit anywhere in Chattanooga, it is an easy drive because it is in the middle of everything. High Point couldn’t be in a better place or have a more convenient building.
High Point has all kinds of different levels of climbing. There is a room of fun and easy climbs just for kids. In the front room there are some climbs that are easy but challenging for beginners. The really challenging climbs are in the pit and behind the pit. Outside the walls are tall and they have easy and hard climbs. There is also an extremely hard bouldering area for ages 14 and older. The climbs are graded from 5.5 (easy) to 5.13 (really, really difficult). Every climb has a different level but everything is still really fun. The hardest climb that I did, I used rocks from both a 5.10 and 5.11 climb.
High Point is one of the best climbing places ever. It has huge rooms with plenty of space. It’s right in the middle of downtown Chattanooga, and it has a lot of easy, medium, and difficult walls to climb. The oldest person in our family who climbed is 38 and the youngest is six, and everyone who climbed loved everything they did. I enjoyed it so much that even though it’s only been three weeks since I climbed there, I want to go back again as soon as possible.
Note from mom: All climbs are belayed (you and your child wear a harness that clips in). A few of the climbs are manual belay (you have to have help from someone who can hold your belay line) but most of the climbs are automatic belay with a motorized pulley at the top. This makes the inevitable falling (and the trip down when you're done) safe and fun.
