Gaswerk Climbing Centre Zurich

When we were driving into Zurich we thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the biggest climbing centre in Europe as we were passing through on the way to Austria. We picked up a hire car and used Google Maps on my Dad's phone to navigate there. We didn't realise that data roaming cost so much in Switzerland and my Dad ran up a bill of 39 pounds in 20 minutes!

We got to the centre and saw a van for the Slovenia climbing team in the car park!

Inside the centre was amazing. There were lots of different rooms with many  of different angles of wall and training equipment.

We were really impressed at how different the walls were to the other centres we have been to. Some were extremely overhanging and some were mega slabs! I could almost walk up the slab without my hands!

As well as the many rooms there was a balcony with a large lead wall and a boulder wall. It was a hot day and the mats had a shiny plastic cover which burned my skin when I sat down!

I started with a couple of leads on the outdoor walls. It was really fun to climb outdoors as it was such a nice day and I had never done it before. It was good experience for the competition as we expected it would also be on outside walls.

Next we went inside to try some of the mega tall overhangs and this was the wall the Slovenia Climbing team were training on.

On this climb to make sure I wasn't scared of falling I took a whipper from the top of the climb. Another reason I did this was because I didn't know how to clip the lower-offs in this centre - see picture!

After doing a few more climbs we decided that we ought to head off for Austria before it got too dark!