The sport of climbing is one of the fastest growing and will feature in the Tokyo Olympic Games. It can be enjoyed by all ages and abilities both indoors on purpose-built walls and outdoors on natural rock in summer and rock, snow and ice in winter.
Bouldering is the purist form of climbing, tackling shorter problems unroped. Roped climbing requires specialised equipment and may be done on single pitch crags or multi pitch routes on mountain cliffs.
Aberdeenshire boasts a wealth of top class outdoor climbing venues from sea cliffs on the Kincardine and Buchan coastline to inland crags such as Clachnaben and the Pass of Ballater. There are also the magnificent mountain crags of Lochnagar and Creag an Dubh-Loch on Deeside.
There are several indoor climbing walls in Aberdeenshire’s schools and Community centres.
Alford Community Campus has a Dream Walls facility built in 2015 and is open for public use. It is also home to the Alford Kids Climbing Club. Alford Community Campus is an approved centre to deliver the National Indoor Climbing Award Scheme (NICAS).
Live Life Aberdeenshire also operates an Entre Prises mobile climbing tower for outdoor events, activity days, team building and instructional sessions.
National Instructional courses and leadership schemes are overseen by www.mountain-training.org/ based at the National Outdoor Training Centre, Glenmore Lodge.
Exemplar risk assessment: Climbing
Live Life Outdoors work in partnership with the following approved providers who deliver climbing:
