One of the benefits of a Touchstone Climbing membership is that you have access to 9 world class climbing and fitness gyms across California. But are you taking advantage of this perk? Two Mission Cliffs members recently took the plunge and road tripped the state – climbing at all 9 locations in just three days! Gina Lam and Christine Sierra just completed their whirlwind tour of every Touchstone Climbing gym and submitted this trip report.
Wednesday, July 15th:
We arrived at Mission Cliffs, full of energy and excited to start our Touchstone Road Trip!
Next we went to Great Western Power Company in Oakland! This was our first time at this location!
Our third gym was Berkeley Ironworks. We really liked it there – the staff was pretty awesome and funny! We found a fantastic photographer who laid down to get the perfect shot for us! At this point our hands are pretty sore, and we realized how CLOSE both Berkeley Ironworks and GWPC are to us! We’ll be sure to take advantage of this in the future…
Our fourth gym was Diablo Rock Gym in Concord. When we got there it was hot, and we were fighting some crazy food comas. After a quick power nap, we went inside, met another traveling climber who was headed to LA Boulders the following day too and climbed a few more routes! We had to make it quick to beat traffic.
On our way out, we met DRG manager Hans Florine, who happened to be talking to Mission Cliffs manager Donna Hawkins! Donna had helped us take our Mission Cliffs picture earlier that morning! It’s a small Touchstone Climbing world after all…
At the end of the day we were exhausted, but we made it to Sacramento! Gina and I were here a few months ago and we love Sacramento Pipeworks. This is one of our favorite gyms! After giving our poor hands a few hours of rest we dragged my sister along and she did research on the couch while we climbed.
Thursday, July 16th:
We woke up in the wee hours of the morning to try to avoid the LA traffic later in the evening and headed to Fresno. MetalMark has my favorite logo, so I had to grab a tank top! Michelle who works at the front desk recommended the House of Juju for lunch. We REALLY appreciated the recommendation because the food was fantastic! I will definitely go back the next time I climb Metalmark!
Later that day we made it to LA, and fortunately didn’t hit TOO much traffic. We embarrassed ourselves by walking in with our harnesses because we were brain dead at that point… (LA Boulders is a bouldering only gym) but at least we didn’t put them on. We found out that desk staffers Kevin and Ryan might be up in SF within the next month or two! Hopefully we’ll catch them at Mission Cliffs if they make it up! We climbed some problems, and went to dinner with a friend who went to high school with Gina.
Friday, July 17th:
We work up crazy early again and headed up to San Jose. We ran into Kendra, who recognized us from Great Western Power Company the day before! After we left, we went to the Vietnamese Mall and got some amazing food before the last leg of our trek back to San Francisco. We definitely plan to make another few trips to The Studio followed by more Vietnamese food…
We finally made it to Dogpatch Boulders! 9 gyms in three days! It can be done!
