By Jessica Wan. Header photo by Saki Cake. This past June, Touchstone celebrated Pride all month long and Berkeley Ironworks partnered with the OLAS Sanctuary Project, to whom we donated all of our Pride proceeds; we also hosted their group earlier in June for a fun day of climbing (not to mention their first event […]
By KJ de Jesus. “I think it’s important for us as a society to remember that the youth within juvenile justice systems are, most of the time, youths who simply haven’t had the right mentors and supporters around them—because of circumstances beyond their control.” –Q’orianka Kilcher We all climb for different reasons—some folks enjoy […]
Life Academy of Health and Bioscience is a small public high school in Oakland that prepares students in grades 6 through 12 to become our future health professionals. Life Academy has been coming to our San Francisco and East Bay gyms for several years, and it’s always an honor to be a part of […]
By Greg Reichardt. Greg Reichardt (A.K.A. Mr. Greg), special education teacher for the Contra Costa County Office of Education in Brentwood, has been bringing his special day class to Diablo Rock Gym in Concord, CA since the beginning of 2019. His students with special needs have a combination of learning disabilities and behavior and […]
Photos by Fred Pompermeyer. Covenant House California is a nonprofit organization that provides sanctuary and support for youth ages 18–24 facing homelessness and human trafficking. They’ve been offering crucial services to address the holistic health of their beneficiaries since 1988, including meals, case management, education, medical care, internships, and clothing. Hollywood Boulders has been proud […]
Dr. Jennifer Crocker, the Medical Director of Valley Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Rehabilitation Department, has been bringing children with disabilities to MetalMark Climbing + Fitness since 2012. Adaptive sports are a powerful way to show the kids that their bodies are strong and capable. We believe that climbing is for everyone, and it is a […]
Climbing may rank pretty low on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but we’ve found that it can play an integral role in helping people rebuild after their lives have been shattered. Bay Area Rescue Mission is an organization dedicated to helping people experiencing homelessness, addiction, or folks who are otherwise down and out get back […]
This has been one heck of a year, friends! We started new partnerships while strengthening old ones, threw some incredible events, from our second annual Woman Up Festival and Battle of the Bay Bouldering Comp to our first Pride Parties, and had the honor of working alongside some of the hardest working orgs in the […]
This year’s Color the Crag at Horsepens 40 in Steele, Alabama was bigger than ever. Offering an incredible array of climbing clinics, panels, and breakout sessions ranging from how to project outside to positive masculinity (not to mention some truly powerful events like a keynote delivered by James Mills, a performance by Deqn Sue, and a […]
By Ting Chin. No seriously, we totally do! And not just with Jordan’s random, prolonged hugs to strangers and Dan’s sporadic calls of encouragement to struggling climbers from the desk. Not just with treating our employees and members with respect and compassion and rising to the daily toil of folding many dozens of towels in […]
