Today, Judy and I enrolled for an annual membership at Planet Granite, the local climbing gym. The nice thing is that the gym is extremely close to where we live. It’s less than a mile away from our house which almost makes us feel bad for getting into a car and driving there, but hey, it’s quite a bit colder up here. Maybe we’ll walk there in the summer.

Planet Granite is a really nice gym. It’s got a shop inside with clothes, books, and climbing equipment for sale. There’s two bouldering rooms, apparently split by difficulty level. The easier room is filled with mostly V0s and V1s with a few 2s and 3s. The other room has mostly V3+ climbs. There is a cool top rope section that’s really tall, probably a good 50% higher than the top roped climbs at Vertical Hold. We’ve only bouldered there, but will definitely try some of the top rope problems in the future.

The gym is also much more than a climbing gym. There are also aerobic machines (bikes, treadmills, elliptical walkers, etc.) and a pretty nice weight room, including free weights. There’s also yoga classes which Judy would be interested in.

Of course, you end up paying for all these amenities. There is a discount if you sign up for a “Family” membership, but unlike Vertical Hold, however, a couples membership has some caveats. The couples must provide proof of a joint banking account. It’s a big savings so I ended up adding Judy’s name to my checking account to qualify. But even with the couples membership, the annual fees are a hefty $890/year. Yikes, that’s more than double the Vertical Hold rate of $387/year! Oh well. One nice thing is that TiVo has a “Wellness Fund” program that gives employees $50 a quarter towards fitness expenses like gym memberships and the like. That’s an extra $200 that I can apply towards the membership which helps a bit.

Posted by Roger at 9:44 pm.