Community for sale!
“Learn to lead trad and climb cracks while building community with other women.”
“Build community, confidence, and competence.”
“This program is a great way to meet other local climbers and find new climbing partners!”
These are all phrases that I’ve used in the last few years in marketing materials for climbing programs I’ve offered. I don’t think my intentions have been bad; one of the reasons I like my job as a climbing guide is the social connection it provides. I love working with people in person, and I find joy in the long term relationships I’ve built with many returning students and participants.
But it’s starting to feel like using the appeal of “community” within marketing efforts reduces it to a product that I am selling, and this has been making me increasingly uncomfortable. Humans have an innate need for social connection, just as we need water, food, and shelter to survive. The last United States Surgeon General described our current rates of loneliness and social isolation as an “epidemic” and associated our lack of social connection with increased risks of other health problems like stroke, dementia, and cardiovascular disease. If I believe all humans have a right to clean water, food, and shelter, do I want to be in the business of marketing and profiting off of another human need?
Climbing has long been a significant source of connection and community for me. A couple years ago, I wrote about how my local climbing areas have become my “third places.” My local crags are where I bump into acquaintances and meet up with friends, where I form new connections, and where I give back through volunteering and advocacy. Climbing gyms have also filled that niche for me in the past.
When Ray Oldenburg originally coined the term “third place,” he envisioned institutions without significant financial barriers to entry. It’s hard to argue that inclusion in the climbing community isn’t at least somewhat tied to socioeconomic status. Yes, there are nonprofit climbing gyms and sliding scale climbing programs, but these are the exception rather than the norm. And the climbing courses I’ve offered with the promise of “building community,” are absolutely fee-for-service programs. The more I offer “community” as a selling point, the more I’ve started to make myself cringe.
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I recently listened to a 2025 episode of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute podcast called “Beware the Wellness Industrial Complex,” and I was struck by how it reminded me of some aspects of climbing culture. The episode suggests that the wellness industry has increasingly attempted to replace organized religion and spirituality, offering people a set of rules around how to live “good lives.” If you eat a certain way and workout a certain way, in other words, you will be happy and fulfilled. Within climbing culture, sometimes we think that if we can just train hard enough and send the next grade, we will achieve our purpose.
Climbing culture and the wellness industry also both exist squarely within a capitalist economy. The wellness industry may purport to provide purpose, wellbeing, and even community, but only to those that can pay for Peloton classes or green juice. The episode points out that the wellness industry does not fully replace all elements of organized religion, especially the pieces that look outward and ask us to care for one another during hard times. There may be a community aspect to Orange Theory classes, but as soon as someone is sick or can’t afford to attend, they no longer belong.
When I reflect on my own childhood within a Catholic church community, it’s the parts beyond actual church services that stand out. It’s the community theater productions I participated in for years, learning dance routines for the Wizard of Oz and The Music Man as part of a multigenerational cast. It’s the fish fries on Friday nights that were free and open to anyone. It’s dropping off winter coats at the clothing swap in the church basement. It’s also the physical building; anyone can go inside most churches at most times of day to pray or simply exist.
As they discussed on “It’s Been a Minute,” organized religion also provides structure around communal rites like grief and loss. This hit me hard this winter, as my hometown suffered during the ICE occupation of Minneapolis and my West Coast guiding community collectively experienced big losses to avalanches. The more loss I experience individually and collectively, the more I understand having rituals and support to fall back on as a community.
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This is not necessarily an argument for or against going to church. Instead, it’s an invitation to consider what community benefits we may have lost with the decline of participation in organized religion and third places and how we might recreate these. In the surgeon general’s 2023 advisory, “Social Infrastructure” is defined as the “programs…policies…and physical elements of a community that support the development of social connection.” The report gives examples like sports groups, member associations, libraries, parks, and public transportation. Climbing gyms and crags could arguably be parts of social infrastructure, but they would have to reimagine access.
Surgeon General Murthy agrees, saying that “social connection…is not something that is accessed equitably.” Even parts of public social infrastructure like parks or libraries are often not distributed equally across neighborhoods. Climbing infrastructure, on the other hand, comes at a much higher cost. Since I’ve been climbing at indoor gyms, I’ve watched day pass prices climb from about $10 to over $30. Monthly memberships have jumped higher than $100, and opportunities for sliding scale memberships are uncommon. This Climbing Magazine article notes that indoor climbing gyms these days are largely backed by venture capitalists motivated to maximize their profits, and it shows.
While I can’t think of any guide service that’s funded by venture capital, outdoor climbing isn’t any more accessible. It may be even harder to access, especially at first. Climbing outdoors usually requires a vehicle, expensive gear, and the knowledge to use that gear properly. Costs for private guiding or instruction run between $150 - $500+ per person, depending on ratios. As someone who depends on this type of work for income, I can say that the margins are tight and lowering these costs would require some creativity.
So before we go around selling the promise of “community” in climbing gyms or on climbing programs, perhaps we should examine what we mean by community (and yes, I’m talking to myself here.) Do we explicitly mean community only for those who can pay the barrier to entry? Because that’s currently the product we’re (I’m) selling. Or can we as a climbing “community” intentionally shift our structure to actually become part of the equitable social infrastructure that Surgeon General Murthy describes? What would this take? Can we do this and actually pay staff who run climbing programs (cough*me*cough) a living wage?
I don’t have all the answers, but I can at least be critical about how I’m using the promise of community as a marketing tool. I can think creatively about increasing access to programs, perhaps offering diverse programs with different pricing options. I can also consider other avenues for community building that don’t revolve around my job. Ray Oldenburg called them “third places” for a reason – not home, not work, but a third place for social connection, places where I may interact with people from all walks of life, not just climbers.
