The Front Range’s newest climbing gym is a massive facility with walls topping out at more than 60 feet above ground, making them the tallest in the state, according to the gym’s owners.

The Longmont Climbing Collective has 26,000 square feet of floor space with 25,000 square feet of climbing walls, of which 19,500 is devoted to top-rope walls and the remainder to bouldering features. When it opened last week, member Elle Fannon was blown away.

“It’s a really incredible building, just gorgeous,” she said. “Beautiful, thoughtful, really appealing to lots of different types of athletes.”

The state-of-the-art center has a fitness area with weights, a yoga room and a cardio room with treadmills, spin bikes and Stairmasters. It soon will have a recovery room with a sauna, hot and cold plunge pools, and access to physical therapists for massage and injury evaluation. Two sides of the building have walls that can slide up like garage doors on nice days.

They are building an outdoor climbing wall on the west side of the building, which has gorgeous views of the Indian Peaks on the Continental Divide and the Longs Peak-Mount Meeker massif. In the future they hope to host World Cup climbing events.

The climbing walls are so high, owners invested $50,000 in a mechanical lift to assist route setters. Routes will be reset every five to six weeks. There are more than 10,000 potential holds.

“I think it’s a really unique setting that people are going to love being a part of,” Fannon said. “They really have great vision, so they’ve organized the building with the outdoor climbing wall, and garage doors that will go up and down so people can feel like they’re outside even when they’re inside. It’s a really beautiful thing.”

Located about four miles west of Interstate 25 on State Highway 119 (Ken Pratt Blvd.), just west of Longmont’s welcome sign, the Longmont Climbing Collective is owned by Bryan Hylenski, his wife Shauna, and Aaron Tellier, who is Shauna’s brother-in-law. For years, Bryan and Shauna dreamed of opening a full-service climbing gym in Longmont. In 2018, they opened a bouldering gym, because they couldn’t afford to build a gym with big walls. The new facility is replacing the bouldering gym.

Last January they bought another climbing gym in Loveland, and next year they will open a third location under the Climbing Collective brand in a historic Greeley building.

Hylenski has an extensive climbing résumé that includes climbs in Alaska, South America, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and the Himalayas. He created a climbing shoe brand, Butora, based in South Korea where the couple lived for a decade. They never gave up on their dream to build a climbing gym in Longmont.

“We’ve always known that Longmont has this enormous potential,” Shauna Hylenski said. “When we moved here in ’99, we immediately fell in love with this town and this community. When we came back (from South Korea) in 2015 and there was no climbing gym, still, we were kind of shocked. We did demographic studies to see how many climbers lived in this 30- to 40-mile radius, and we were astounded.”

The bouldering facility was a start in 2018, but their dream has been realized with the new facility.

“We wanted a recovery room with saunas and plunge pools,” Bryan Hylenski said. “We wanted outdoor climbing, like we had in Korea, where our daughter could go and relax and not worry about rockfall. We wanted an area where dogs could run around, and maybe build a brewery. We have enough land, and now we have loads of opportunity.”

Bryan is the general manager, Shauna is the program director, and Tellier is the marketing guy. Part of his job is to decide which local beers they should offer on 12 brew taps in the gym’s lounge area. “I’m personally going to pick them out,” Tellier said. “That’s a good part of my job. We’re going to source from all the best breweries around here.”

Fannon and her family were members at the bouldering gym that preceded the new facility, so she knows the spirit the Hylenskis bring to the business.

“They’ve been able to cultivate a great community for people who are climbers, but also for people who are new to climbing,” Fannon said. “It just feels like a really safe space. Everyone is really friendly. You walk in, they know you by name. They’ve just done a really great job, and that’s a gift to our community.”

Monthly memberships cost $89 per month for individual adults, $169 for couples and $199 for families. Memberships will be good at the new Longmont Climbing Collective, the Loveland Climbing Collective, and the new location in Greeley when it opens early next year. Discounts are available for teachers, first responders and members of the military. Day passes cost $25 for adults and $16-$20 for kids.

The Denver Post