HALF MOON BOULDERING Cultivating a new kind of climbing community By Gloria Man, community partner and co-owner of Half Moon Bouldering
Gloria Man in Half Moon Bouldering. All photos courtesy of Gloria and Daniel Man.
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treaks of glue are glistening in our hair and work overalls from another late night working on the bouldering gym’s construction. My life partner Daniel is putting up wall paneling while I assist, a wet rag in my hands to wipe away residue from the installation. We’re exhausted and elated at the same time. It seems surreal to be putting the finishing touches on a project that has absorbed the last five years of our lives. In building Half Moon Bouldering, our family start-up and the first bouldering gym in Greenwood, we feel like we’ve been aiming for the moon, and now it seems we’re actually close to landing. I have to smile as Daniel mutters about the irregular corners of our mid-20th century building. Small details like this are charming, until you have to deal with construction and straight lines. Like many small businesses before us, we’re doing pretty much everything ourselves – from strategic planning to construction work – and I reflect on the many skills we have yet to hone. Our gym is in the space that belonged to Top Ten Toys, one of Seattle’s iconic family-owned businesses whose owners recently retired. I am keenly aware that we are stepping into big shoes, and we hope to become as much a part of the community as our predecessors had been.
Filling a need In December 2020, after five years of planning, we reached the final stretch of building Half Moon Bouldering (our official opening was delayed until March of 2021 due to the pandemic).
We wanted to create an inclusive, intergenerational gym, welcoming people of all skill levels and ages. Hiring our first staff felt like a miracle at the end of an unprecedented year. The two of us were betting all we had by opening an indoor bouldering crag in the middle of uncertain times. In pre-pandemic days, our plan looked solid; the market practically begged for a new climbing gym. Though Seattle has a wide-spread climbing culture, in 2019 there weren’t any commercial climbing gyms in the city’s northern neighborhoods. The sport’s popularity continues to rise today as climbing and bouldering become mainstream activities, with many people first learning about climbing as an indoor sport. Half Moon Bouldering was created to fill a gap in access based on the sport’s demand.
Roots While it made sense from an economic perspective to build in the heart of Greenwood, we were also driven by a fundamental desire to spread roots in this green city that we came to love as our adoptive home. Daniel and I grew up behind the Iron Curtain during the worst years of the communist dictatorship in Romania. We learned early in life the importance of escaping the drab city with its gray buildings, unkempt muddy roads, empty grocery stores, electricity shortages, and communist propaganda. We turned to the outdoors. Happy snapshots from our youth show us traveling on long, snail-paced trains to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains; hitchhiking on mountaineers.org
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