The newly opened Reach Indoor Climbing in Aurora offers elite climbers the opportunity to test their limits while nurturing new climbers of all ages and abilities
A few years ago Brandon Barraclough, Emily Vincent, Tim Richards and Sarah Thorne joined forces to climb Newmarket.
Now in Aurora at 212 Earl Stewart Dr. opened his own climbing gym, Reach Indoor Climbing.
“In the back of our minds we always had the idea of what if we had an accessible space in which to create our own program,” said Sarah Thorne, one of the owners of Reach Indoor Climbing and a resident of Newmarket.
“Our mentality as a group is that climbing is for everyone. Anyone with a physical or mental disability, young or old. Brandon is passionate about providing opportunities for disadvantaged and First Nations individuals and does a lot of outreach.”
Thorne, Occupational Therapist and Clinical Director at the Center of Arthritis Excellence in Newmarket, is the approachable and therapeutic climbing leader at Reach Indoor Climbing.
“People think rock climbing is a physically demanding sport, which it can be,” she says. “But there are a few things that make it an amazing tool for therapeutic use. It is mindful by nature, meaning that the only time you can focus on climbing is when you are climbing. So, in order to overcome emotional or mental challenges, you have to be in the moment. This mindfulness practice is a gateway to emotional health management.”
Thorne’s background allows her to combine her expertise in occupational therapy with her passion for rock climbing by developing and promoting programs that provide opportunities for accessible recreation, therapeutic interventions and elite parag climbing.
“One thing about climbing is that every move is a newer, novel move. When our brains work in different ways, we can access our recovery in more unique ways than traditional machines, by walking on level ground or lying flat,” she says. “By doing this, we activate and recruit our muscles in a very different order with each movement. This novel movement really pleases our brain.
“At Reach, we’ve used rock climbing for all kinds of diagnoses, including young children with ADHD, people with physical and cognitive disabilities, people recovering from concussion, and people with anxiety and depression. Those are areas that I have experience in and these are areas that we hope to expand on when we release our full programming in September.”
Sport climbing made its debut as an Olympic sport at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, and the Reach Indoor Climbing team hopes to make the sport more accessible in the York area.
“There’s now more interest in the competitive aspects of climbing,” says Thorne. “We want to show the community that this sport has longevity and potential for growth. Mainly because it is a sport that you can practice for a lifetime.”
As a full-service climbing gym, Reach Indoor Climbing offers all major climbing disciplines including bouldering (climbing without a rope), top-rope climbing, lead climbing and self-belay climbing.
The gym also has an upper floor with exercise boards for those who wish to come alone or are training for a specific event.
“In addition to the climbing rooms, we offer all kinds of climbing programs for adults and youth,” Thorne said. “We also offer summer camps, birthday parties and team building.”
A big step in building Reach Indoor Climbing was designing the climbing walls and angles to provide different climbing options.
“We wanted variety so we could use and repurpose the space,” Thorne said. “We want to be able to create unique climbs at all times. Every week or two, part of the wall is torn down and new “problems” are hung on the wall. People are used to climbing different levels of difficulty, but we want to focus on teaching our customers a new skill on every different boulder or route. Our team is focused on introducing people to new skills and building via ferratas that allow them to develop those skills further.”
With the opening in the York area, the Reach Indoor Climbing team hopes to achieve some important goals. The most important of these is promoting a sense of community and demonstrating that this is a sport for everyone.
“We want to make people feel like they can come in for a workout but also to hang out,” Thorne said. “Also, we really want everyone who enters our facility to feel like it’s an easy entry point where they can climb for the first time and progress from there. We want people to know that anyone can do this if they are interested.”
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