Climb So iLL at the Steel Shop

It was our first time visiting today. We only did the auto belay section. My six year old daughter loved it. She's been climbing before but only once so she was super nervous at first and refused to do anything the first hour we were there. Luckily she snapped out of it and Alex was so good with her and patient. She wanted him to show her how to do things and get started.

Staff is super friendly, and everyone at the gym seems respectful of all other climbers and seems to observe common courtesy. With a membership, not only do you get access to the bouldering wall and main climbing walls, but you get access to their workout area with ample pull-up bar esque play-space, and free fitness classes as well as yoga classes! If you want to experience the front area geared mostly towards kids (called the gravity lab i think), you either need to come on a Tuesday(I believe it is open to members then) or pay extra I believe. If you want to use this area, I believe you must make a reservation, or else IF THEY ARE AT CAPACITY, YOU WILL BE TURNED AWAY(the gravity lab specifically)!!! You do have to pay for the classes that teach you how to climb, but you get a discount on it! I believe you can take the tests for certification without the course, but I am not sure since I came in as a rookie and definitely need the classes. Your first month you get free rental gear, and if you finish your little passport booklet in the first 90 days you get 40% off one item, which is a big difference on a pair of climbing shoes! There are a good mix of different routes available for each climbing type, and they have tags to put on your harness if you are looking for a buddy to belay you, but honestly if you just ask someone odds are they will say yes. Amazing community, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone!

My nephew went to this place for a birthday party, and it was a fun experience overall. However, there were no staff around our area, so when two of the auto-belay systems (the things that buckle you to the wall) went up, we couldn’t use those climbing walls. That was a bit disappointing since it limited what we could do. Other than that, it was a good time!

I want to preface this review by saying, the climbing here is great, starting with phenomenal routesetting. There were problems with very complex beta. There were about 7 or 8 that looked like fun multi-session projects. I sadly can't do that since I'm traveling. But it would be very fun to climb here on a regular basis to get to know the style of these routesetters. They have obvious strength in slopers, core tention, campusing, and heel hooking. There is a variety of textures on the holds. So iLL holds are featured, but they have many brands represented on the wall. Got a day pass for $20. Great bouldering wall. They have slab, a 45° and everything in between. The walls are very textured. They have a lot of volumes. The holds are very grippy, I used up almost all my skin in my 2 hour session. The grading is consistent and accurate. I was able to flash most of the problems below my grade level, and got a few at my level. The harder problems such as the V8+ black tags were indeed difficult, but I was still able to do one or two moves on them. So there certainly was an endurance aspect to some of the harder climbs. They used many good sets of holds on the easier problems which is rare to see, but cool for the newer climbers to experience these modern holds. Overall the setting is very good. They could certainly put up more problems, especially on the slab. On one slab wall there were only 2 boulder problems. The majority of the boulders were very low percentage, there weren't many small crimps. Staff was friendly, good shop with many shoe and gear purchase selections. The bathrooms were very clean. The building is an old converted powerplant, and they left most of the historic architecture, which is very cool. I'm excited to check out the other So iLL locations in St. Louis, and look forward to visiting this location again soon!

In town for a visit and absolutely loved Climb So iLL!! Plenty of routes for all levels in bouldering and climbing. There are 6 auto-belays, 40+ climbing routes, and entire section separate for kids. The gym in the back has just about everything you need - Rogue (free weights, benches, treadmill, assault bike, med ball). All of the gym equipment and rental equipment (shoes, harness, chalk) were quality and in good condition. The staff was super friendly and the building was very cool. I would love and be a member of a gym like this in my hometown if we had one.