Sportrock Climbing Centers (Alexandria and Sterling, VA)

Sportrock Climbing Center is a great place to do indoor rock climbing. This indoor gym was spacious, had a variety of walls to climb, and had various levels of difficulty for the beginners as well as the advanced. If you are trained to climb, you can use the gym on your own during open climb, or if you have never climbed or are a beginner, you can go to open hours and take turns climbing the walls with one of the staff members.

The gym has both rock climbing and bouldering available, and the walls range from under ten feet (bouldering without a harness) to 40 feet for rock climbing (with a harness). The staff was incredibly friendly and helpful, and really made the experience worthwhile. Throughout the open climb, they offered tips to help each person to improve, and I enjoyed doing something new and exciting.

This place is great for parties, camp groups, or individuals of varying ages. For open climb, they will take anybody age 6 and above. There is one person on duty for open climb, 12-5pm on Sat. and Sun. (except during the summer, when weekdays are also open), and depending on how busy it is, you can get in a decent amount of climbing or do a bit of waiting between turns. If you are interested in taking a more serious approach, they offer classes for yoga, bouldering, and rock climbing. The one downside is that the location is difficult to find, but overall we enjoyed ourselves, and plan to go back in the future.

Website: http://sportrock.com/

Cost: $5.00 per climb during open climb hours

Age Range: 6 and up.