To build the nation’s largest new climbing gym in 2024, Englewood-based Movement Climbing, Yoga and Fitness literally raised the roof 25 feet over a space that previously housed a golf retailer.
Located in the Centennial Promenade shopping center on County Line Road across the street from Park Meadows, Movement Centennial’s 55-foot-high climbing walls span 28,000 square feet and accomodate 105 routes. It opened last March, and in December, Climbing Business Journal ranked it No. 1 on its list of largest new climbing gyms of 2024.
“When we took over the lease, we popped up (the roof) and recapped the building,” gym director Kory Stratton said during a tour of the space this week while climbers spidered up an Olympic-certified speed wall. “The first time I was in here, just a little over a year ago, there was a cement truck and there was a puddle on the ground, because it rained and the roof wasn’t capped yet.
“To see it become this community space — people having fun, meeting new people, forming friendships, attaining their goals – feels really special to us.”
Movement is the nation’s largest chain of indoor climbing walls, with 30 facilities coast to coast, six of which are located in the Denver-Boulder area. Two of its local gyms, in Golden and Englewood, are former Earth Treks facilities.
The indoor climbing industry continues to demonstrate robust growth. The number of new climbing wall businesses grew an average of 12% per year from 2019 to 2024, according to IBISWorld, an industry research database. Not surprisingly, the Front Range is a hotbed for the sport.
‘People want to live here, and climbers in particular want to live here,” said Evan Pearce, regional manager for Movement. “There’s not only people who are living here and learning to climb, you also have people who are already climbers and they want to move to this area in order to engage in that part of their lifestyle. It’s one of the few cities in the United States where you can live in a major metropolitan area and have access to a lot of climbing very nearby.”
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Another gym company, the Longmont Climbing Collective, opened a year ago with walls measuring 25,000 square feet and 60 feet in height. That company also owns the Loveland Climbing Collective, and in March it plans to open a third location in a historic Greeley building that was built in 1957 as a movie theater..
In February, the Longmont Climbing Collective will host an Ice Climbing World Cup, the first to be held in the United States since Civic Center park hosted one in 2019. That event was the first Ice Climbing World Cup to be held in the nation, and attracted more than 25,000 spectators. The event in February will be the first of five to be held there annually.
Movement’s Englewood location, which opened as an Earth Treks in 2018, is even bigger than Centennial. It has 60-foot-high walls and 42,000 square feet of climbing.
“I think there are a variety of things drawing non-climbers into the sport,” Stratton said. ‘It’s becoming more mainstream. It’s been in the last couple of Olympics. Its opportunity inside the Olympics is growing in scale. It’s more in the public eye, and the American climbers are really good.”
American climbers won two medals at the Paris Olympics this past summer, with Boulder’s Brooke Raboutou taking silver.
“It’s becoming more approachable because it’s more talked about, but I also think we create inviting, fun, safe spaces where we can mitigate the danger, teach you the skills and reduce a lot of those barriers of access,” Stratton said. “Trying anything new is scary, (even) when you’re not 40 feet off the ground. Entering a new community and wondering if there is a space for you creates a ton of barriers for folks. Having high-level expertise and a price point that’s reasonable for the value, and a place where it’s really exciting, is helping to make it grow.”
Hudson Ziegler, 11, right, and his friend Quincy Long, 12, swing on the Rogue Rig Monkey Bars at Movement Centennial climbing gym in Centennial, Colorado, on Dec. 31, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
In addition to the soaring roped walls and a large bouldering space, Movement Centennial has yoga studios and a workout area that includes free weights and cardio machines. Daily passes cost $28 ($23 for students). Individual adult memberships cost $102 a month ($89 for students) and $191 for households. Those prices cover yoga and the fitness area, along with climbing privileges.
“I would wager that probably half of my members have no intention to climb outside, and this is the reason they’re here, for the community,” Stratton said. “I would also say a lot of folks don’t have the intention to (climb) outside of the gym, but they end up doing so as they grow in their climbing.”