EPIC Climbing Gym Opens in El Paso Texas | Sessions Climbing & Fitness

EPIC Climbing Gym Opens in El Paso Texas | Sessions Climbing & Fitness

So we're so excited to be here at Sessions Climbing and Fitness on the west side of El Paso. This is a relatively new facility and we're so excited to showcase all of it. And we're so fortunate to have with us Liz, who's going to basically kind of tell us why the gym was started and all of the different options that basically the gym provides to the public.

So without further ado, let's jump right into it. Liz, thank you so much for having us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Absolutely. So let's go ahead and start off and let's just talk a little bit about why the gym was created. Kind of in the first place, like what was the vision for the gym in El Paso?

The gym was created for the community, really. We wanted to provide something amazing for the community and have the climbing community grow. We wanted to make the climbing accessible to everybody in El Paso. A lot of people you'll see really fall in love with climbing the minute they first step on the wall.

And we wanted to make that available to all of El Paso. Can you talk a little bit about kind of the road to getting here? Yeah, this is a dream of 20 plus years in the making. Our owner, one of our owners, Albert Alvarez, he's been a climber since he was a young teenager.

Before he could find the funds to create something like this, he created Sessions Climbing and Guiding. So it was a guiding service for many, many years. And any way that he could, he wanted to make it accessible to the public. Okay, so before we look at some of the awesome equipment and options that you have here in the gym,

can you tell us a little bit maybe about what you would consider to be the health benefits of climbing in general? The health benefits, first of all, at least personally for me, I'm very biased. It's just going to make you happier altogether. It's an amazing challenge, especially for those who never expected to do something like this.

So there's people who will walk into the door, for example, right? Like say once I had an aunt and her niece and she's like, well, you know, we've been driving around. We've been seeing this being built and everything. We finally see your doors open. Like, what is this place? And it's like, oh, man, you're in for a treat.

Right. Kind of show them the ropes a little bit. Put a harness on, put some shoes, put them into an auto belay. And I say just like just climb, you know, just go and get up. You'll have some fun. And then they're at the top and they're just like so scared.

And but also really, really excited and letting go that release and having them like lower back to the ground. And I always tell them, did you have any idea that you were going to do something that was so exciting, maybe scared you a little bit today and that you were going to be like, I could do hard things, you know, like, wow. So I think a lot of people, more than anything, are really surprised by what they're capable of,

whether they might be a little afraid or really doubtful of themselves. They'll be like, oh, I'm not strong enough to do this. You'll be amazed. I think you this really gives you an opportunity to amaze yourself. Other than that, I mean, actual fitness, you know, you're going to get stronger.

That used to be our motto, by the way, to get stronger every session, you know, like clever because you really do. And your cardio, too, if you're on the walls like your heart rate's going. And again, I think just your overall happiness level, I think there's just not enough to say about that. Your mental health, like how much is going to help that people will be amazed at how meditative this is,

because when you're on the wall, that's all you can focus on. Right. It's very meditative. And also the amount of friends like the community that you're exposed to. I mean, I've seen some of the shyest people come in here not knowing anything about climbing, not knowing anybody here. And over just the last couple of months, seeing the friends that they make here.

It's also the cutest thing in the world, seeing people like couples form. You know, there's a couple here that they came in both like not knowing each other, not knowing climbing. And just a couple of months later, like they're together down, you know, they're a couple. It's just so sweet. So I think the benefits are not just going to be physical.

Those are really obvious. But your mental, you know, your overall well-being, like those benefits, I think you'll be really surprised by. Thank you so much, Liz, for kind of breaking all of that down for us. So if you don't mind, can you show us around kind of some of the different features that we might be able to explore if we had that day pass? Yes.

Here's our welcome room. Our welcome room is really great for beginner climbers because not only does it offer our shortest walls at 35 feet, but it offers a lot of auto belays. So that means you don't need a lot of experience. You could just clip in and climb, which is really great for those who are just trying it for the first time.

It's also really great for experienced climbers who don't have a partner and want to get up and down the walls to get some cardio in, to get some good rounds in for climbing. And this room is also available to rent for birthday parties or any kind of company that wants to do team building activities. Here is our main attraction, our lead wall standing at 56 feet tall. These are the tallest walls that we have in the gym.

And as you can see, there are no ropes hanging from it. That means it is lead only. That means the climber has to clip their rope up into each little draw that you see hanging there as they climb up. Behind me is a section of our bouldering wall.

Our bouldering wall wraps around throughout the entire gym and offers every type of bouldering you might need from overhung to roof to slab climbing. Bouldering, again, is climbing without a rope. And it's great for anybody to try because you don't need any experience and you don't need any equipment. All you need are your climbing shoes.

Behind me is our state-of-the-art speed wall. It's set to Olympic standards. So what you see here is exactly what the athletes do at the Olympics. You can come and try it out with your friends and see who can get to the top first.

Here we have our 45-foot rope wall. This wall has a lot more top rope climbs available to you as well as draws for lead climbing. You should take advantage of one of our free top rope classes with your day pass or your membership so that you can open up a whole new section of climbing for yourself. So right now we're standing in front of our kilter board.

Our kilter board is really great for people who are already experienced climbers and really like to train or for those who are just starting and really want to up their training game. Our kilter board is really great because it provides thousands of different climbs. You connect it to an app and the app then shows you thousands of climbs that are available to you depending on the grade that you want to climb and also depending on the degrees that you want the wall to be at. So this wall moves from 15 degrees all the way down to 60 degrees.

So a V0, for example, at 15 degrees is going to feel a lot harder at 60 degrees. So even the same climb can be done in many different ways depending on what degree you have the wall in. But again, the kilter board is really, really great for anybody who wants to up their training game for climbing. So here we have our campus and our finger training board.

This area is for those climbers who are already experienced or who are really serious about upping their training game. The campus board and the finger training board, as you'll see, is exactly for that, for campusing, which is really training your fingers, like getting that finger strength and getting your body used to hanging only on your fingers on the slightest, like smallest of small edges. So here we're standing inside of our yoga room. As you can see, our yoga room provides a really beautiful view of the west side of El Paso, but it also provides a very calming and peaceful area in which to practice yoga.

Our yoga classes are available to anybody with a membership or anybody with a day pass. So here we have our fitness area. As you can see, we have state of the art weights and cardio machines. Fitness is very important overall, not only for climbing, but also in life.

So climbers love to stay fit. This is a really great area to keep up your training and also just a really great area to warm up, cool down. Any kind of general fitness that you need, you can do it right here. One of the greatest thing about sessions is our cafe, Cafe No Fal here.

Not only do we serve specialty coffee and a delicious lavender matcha, but it's also a really great space to come and do some work or take a break, have a cup of coffee, take advantage of our free Wi-Fi, maybe work remote for the day and relax in between climbs. So thank you so much to Liz, to Sessions Climbing and Fitness here. We're so appreciative of them giving us the opportunity to showcase their fantastic business. Just for having climbed for the first time, I can see the draw.

I can see why people could have so much fun in a place like this and combine it with the community of people that you're going to meet. I mean, it sounds pretty incredible. So thank you so much, Liz. Any kind of parting words for us?

No, just thank you for coming and experiencing this. Like I said, it's just really important for us to get the word out there, to get the community in here, have you guys all experience this and experience how fun it could be. And come and see us. We're not closed ever.

We're open every single day until 9 p.m. But on Fridays and Saturdays, we're open until 10 p.m. So just a little bit later, Christmas Day, even New Year's. We were open.

So come by and see us. All right. Thank you so much.