LEF Climbing 916 North Broadway, Lexington, KY 40505

"Update: the route setting right now feels *awkward*. I don’t know what’s up, if the setters are trying to branch out stylistically, but it needs cleaned up. Fantastic facility for climbing training. The space is large and really has something for everyone including first-time climbers and kids. Two things could use improvement: at the timeframe I went last winter there could be more footholds on the routes on the lead wall. I expect to have multiple foot options on all climbs up to a particular difficulty. Also, the boulders tend to be set a little bit on the dynamic side, which is a higher risk for injuries especially for folks who have previous injury."

"I go here for team Every Thursday and its so fun. The people here are always nice, and the staff do really well at setting fun routes. Been climbing for about 2 years now and have never run into any major issues here. 5/5"

"Medium size climbing gym but is not a good place for beginners. There are barely any bouldering walls or auto belay walls that are manageable for beginners even if you are reasonably fit. Booking a spot for climbing is easy, many spots always available but there isn’t enough to keep you occupied as a beginner for more than an hour."

"I really enjoyed going to this gym when I started, I fell in love with bouldering every week but recently let my membership expire after going here for almost a year. This gym, just in the time I have been going here has made a shift from welcoming to everyone to clearly pandering to their much more experience members. Bouldering routes available to beginner climbers who are level 3 or under, which is pretty much anyone who hasn’t been climbing for over a year; have dramatically increased in difficulty and dramatically decreased in number as well as in variety of climbs available. These now generally take an obvious backseat to more advanced or competition routes these days. Proof of this is in the fact that, I can climb by percentage—less routes on the wall after going here for almost a year, than I could when I had been going for 4 months even though I am twice as strong as I was then. There are however, “practice boards” in the gym that were added this year, seemingly to make up from the lost bouldering space to the competition routes. However, these have a climbing hand strength requirement of roughly level 4 or 5 on LEF’s own bouldering scale so these are useless to new climbers. Climbing is a sport that takes a lot of development of strength in obscure muscles that even the most active non-climbers would struggle to naturally have. This being said, It is a shame that this is the only option for bouldering in Lexington. I like the sport but I’m done paying nearly $100 a month to be told by staff here that, “You just have to keep trying the routes until you are able to do them” when they took away the routes that a new climber would use to bridge the skill gap. I hope this gym goes back to the way it was before the competition routes started, for now—I’ll hang my climbing shoes up for a while."

"Awesome, friendly, and super helpful staff. I’m new to climbing and they’ve patiently answered questions. There’s plenty of bouldering options for newbies, as well as auto belayed climbs. Truly appreciate the later hours too, it’s what convinced me that I could try this as I live out of county and sometimes work late. They constantly change out routes, but not too often so you have plenty of time to work on problems. I love all of the comps they hold too!"