Hilary Harris is well aware of the fact that her windy path to founding Northern New England’s largest rock climbing gym is littered with boulder-sized metaphors.
It was a rocky path, to be sure – getting laid off as an architect at the depthof the recession in 2008 and spending more than three years seeing the project through to fruition. There were cliffs, fiscal and otherwise, as the nearly $3 million structure went from pencil scratches on paper to an enormous steel structure. And there were times Harris felt she was clinging to a ledge by her fingertips, waiting for the muscled arm of Sylvester Stallone to lift her to safety.
It was the ultimate cliffhanger.
“There were times when I was scared, and the hardest thing about it was finding the energy to keep going, finding the endurance,” Harris said. “It’s definitely an art of endurance. But when I was worried, I’d think there’s nothing as scary as some of the things I’ve done as a climber. My life has been at risk as a climber; this is just money. There’s a lot of metaphors to being an entrepreneur and a climber. When you’re on a route, you’ve got the crux, and you’ve got to hang on to the end. This is like doing one crux after another. It got to a point where there’s no turning back, because the fall is too drastic.”
It’s a story that almost writes itself for seasoned pun pros like the Insider – there would ultimately be no fall, only new heights. Operational since Dec. 9, Evolution Rock and Fitness celebrated an official grand opening Saturday, giving greater Concord a full-service rock climbing gym with options for all interest and experience levels.
Harris, who lived in Boulder, Colo., before moving to New Hampshire about 10 years ago, has been climbing for more than 25 years and was always interested in becoming part of the industry. So when she was laid off as an architect in 2008, she read the writing on the (rock) wall and took the professional leap.
“When I moved to New Hampshire, I really wanted to have a state-of-the-art climbing gym in the state, because there weren’t any. But the industry wasn’t in a state at the time to support something of this size, so I put it on the backburner,” Harris said. “But when I was laid off, that was really the catalyst that started this whole journey. My passion has always been rooted in rock climbing; it’s in my blood. So I took the layoff as an opportunity to get back in the industry professionally.”
The gym began the journey from daydream to design in 2009 thanks in large part to Harris’s architectural background, and a little more than three years later the greater Concord area has one of the more interesting facilities in the region.
The gym features 16,000 square feet of climbing space with more than 80 unique routes, most of which will likely change on a 12-week cycle, Harris said, in order to keep things fresh for dedicated members. There are spaces for beginner, intermediate and advanced climbers as well as lead climbing and speed climbing walls and a bouldering area. There is also a Kid’s Zone, featuring a smaller rock wall for children between the ages of 2 and 6.
The gym is laid out so that the walls move progressively from easier to more difficult and so that climbers can constantly interact with one another.
“Climbing is really a social activity. It’s nothing like going to a gym and sticking iPod buds in your ears; it’s really a lot like a community,” Harris said. “That’s why we designed the gym with the layout we did, to foster that social atmosphere.”
Upstairs there are smaller walls for birthday parties or other gatherings, as well as a fitness area featuring free weights and cardiovascular equipment like treadmills, elliptical machines and an exercise bike. There’s also a classroom for fitness classes such as yoga, Zumba and pilates.
The name of the facility is no accident. The space was designed with evolution in mind, meeting the “highest efficiency standards we could,” Harris said. The heating and lighting systems meet efficiency ratings above code requirements, and the roof was constructed so that solar panels could be added in the future. The entire structure was also oriented to the south, so the office area, children’s room and entrance get the most sun during the winter months and the climbing area stays cooler. That resulted in a potential blank facade facing the street, which didn’t please city officials, so Harris and some architect friends put their heads together and decorated that side of the building with a mural featuring the Old Man of the Mountain and a profile of the Presidential Traverse.
The interior of the space embodies evolution, as well. Blending top-of-the-line materials and cutting edge techniques from Rockwerx, a Massachusetts-based climbing wall manufacturer, the gym was designed so it could “be changed easily in the future” and “evolve with the growing needs of future climbers.”
At the same time, there are plans to include educational and historical materials near the main entrance to provide context for a state whose first climbing ascent came in 1910, Harris said.
“Most gyms are built for today, in the now. There’s no historical context,” Harris said. “We wanted to bring that back to the collective community of climbing. The roots here are deeper, and that’s so powerful, so inspiring. It’s something we don’t want the new generation to lose. We want to be the conduit between the future and history of climbing.”
Setting up shop in Concord was no accident. Though Harris was pressured by early advisers to build in Manchester, she opted for the state capital because of its proximity to northern parts of the state populated by pockets of climbers.
“When I started becoming more serious about building it, a lot of people said to do it in Manchester, but my gut was telling me it wasn’t the right place, because a lot of climbers are north of here,” Harris said. “Manchester is just far enough to deter those people, but we’re close enough (to attract them) and to draw from the south. It just seemed like Concord really needed something like this. More and more young people are rearing their head in this city and they want more things to do here. So I took the chance.”
Despite the financial outlay and uncertainty, it’s a chance she’d take again. The only rocky paths Harris sees in her future are ones she orders for the walls of her business.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything else ever again in my life,” Harris said. “I wouldn’t change it for the world. My advice to anyone is to follow your bliss.”
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