So the Bladium is a unique gym that opened up in Alameda around 2000. Unique in the fact that it has 2 full sized hocky rinks, a soccer field, a basket ball court, weight room, and a few other gym things, all INSIDE 1 building. The Bladium is located on the old Naval base at Alameda Point, inside one of the humongous hangers there.
Well, ever since I had heard about it, I had also heard that they were going to have a climbing wall. I love climbing, and I’ve been to both Mission Cliffs in San Francisco and the Berkeley Ironworks. Both sites are professional climbing gyms with hundreds of routes and full membership options. The only problem for me was that they were not easliy accessable. So having the Bladium, right here on the island, was perfect. Unfortunately, the wall was never created, it was always in limbo due to one thing or another (city permits, contractor costs, etc).
Finally, this last December (2004) they finished it 🙂
So Kristen, Alicia and I all headed over to try it out, and we had a blast. The costs are about $15 for the full day for non members, but that comes with all gear and any training needed. I surprised myself, I thought I wouldn’t be able to any of the 5.8 trails the first day I was back after 2-5 years, but I pulled them off. At the end of the day my fingers had no grip and my forearms were killing me, but surprisingly the rest of my body was fine. My legs weren’t sore at all.
Below you will find a few pictures shot from two of our climbs, I had forgotten to grab the camera for the majority of the day. I wanted to grab a shot from the top one of the trails, but the harness was too tight and I could not get the camera out of my pocket.
http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/mc_tour.html
http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/bi_tour.html
http://www.bladium.com/PublicFacilityAreas.asp?FacilityID=5&CompanyID=1&FacilityAreaID=37
I got some ghetto booty in some of those pics! We gotta do this again, soon!