Climbing gym comes with a solution for the Federal Way community

Nora is Korean for the word “play,” and that’s what the owners of new climbing gym Climb Nora hope to incorporate into every aspect of their offerings when they open in mid-2025.

The gym will be located across the street from Federal Way High School at 30820 Pacific Highway South in Federal Way.

The climbing gym was created to focus on making climbing accessible for everyone. It will include a 12,000 square foot bouldering gym with two full-sized boards. The climbing boards are created to be universal and offer a variety of standardized routes. This makes it possible for gym attendees to compete or share tips with other climbers across the world who use the same board.

That passport to a global community of climbers is just one way the founders hope to use the gym as a tool for building connections.

“This whole project stems from two things, my love of climbing and the community it brought me,” said Seung Park, a member of the gym’s founding team.

Growing up, Park said the sports he tried didn’t click with him. He didn’t like running and he lacked the coordination for more typical team sports. One day he saw a video of rock climbing on YouTube, signed up for a class and never looked back.

Park said that climbing gave him a “sport culture and a sport community that I actually fit in with. It’s such a good feeling,” adding that “I really found a home and community that I wasn’t expecting. It’s this amazing combination of sport and friendship.”

Park grew up in Federal Way, graduating from Todd Beamer High School. One of the reasons he wanted to open the gym here is because “one of the most common complaints or issues that I see is that there’s not much to do in Federal Way.” He hopes to create a gathering place where people of all ages can challenge themselves, make friends and find community.

“One of our primary missions is actually to serve the community. Federal Way high schools have a lot of economically disadvantaged kids, and I was one of them,” Park said.

The gym’s proximity to the high school is intentional. Park said eventually they hope to offer youth sports programs, but until then, it will still be a place that welcomes students who may want to do homework or do some climbing after class.

Park shared that he also appreciates the sport’s ability to bridge generational gaps in other ways.

“Yesterday I was in the gym and a grandpa and his grandson were climbing together. How many sports can you see that?” Park said. He explained that each person is experiencing their own relative difficulty of the sport while also spending time together and enjoying the sport in the same space.

Harlow Huber and Linh Nguyen are two other founding members of Climb Nora, helping out wherever they can, whether that is helping to build out the climbing boards or screen-printing T-shirts.

Both share Park’s story of falling in love with climbing for the welcoming community as well as the accessibility of the sport for a variety of fitness levels and the element of personal challenge.

When it comes to creating Climb Nora, Huber said he hopes to create a space that provides for skill progression. At a lot of gyms, “you can get stuck in a certain grade range because there’s maybe a harsh jump between difficulty or style…I would like to create more of a holistic experience…at all levels,” Huber said.

For Nguyen, the community aspect is important to build at the space they are creating.

Since she began participating in the climbing community, the sport has changed, Nguyen said. A boom in popularity has led to climbing being added to the Olympics, but also “independent gyms have been acquired. A lot of them have been commercialized,” Nguyen said.

At Climb Nora, she said she wants to “replicate that intimate community feel.” This was especially meaningful to her as someone who was “super anti-social” before she began climbing. “Because the community was so friendly, I ended up making all my friends here,” she said.

Nguyen and Huber described themselves as “lifestyle climbers” and said it’s a passion that can end up infusing every part of your life. This community aspect is a big part of that.

They both book vacations around new places to climb and new communities to connect with, Huber said. “When you travel, it’s like, a way to explore the world…I want to see what the rock-climbing community is like there there…I want to see how their philosophy and approach to rock climbing is like, because it’s very different, even within the U.S.”

For those who might be nervous to try, Nguyen said she felt that way at first too.

“I was really intimidated. There was one time I showed up and I sat there I just watched everybody, and then I went home. I was too scared,” Nguyen said. “I think it’s like the fear of climbing in front of people is what gets in your head…But then you realize that everyone falls and no one really cares, and everyone’s very supportive, like, everyone will cheer for you.”

Although neither Nguyen or Huber are from Federal Way, they are looking forward to spending time in the community. Nguyen said the gym will fill the huge gap between Seattle and Tacoma and said even moving eastward in the south end there aren’t really any gyms.

She’s also looking forward to the diversity of the community, saying she’s climbed in New York and in Austin and that having a diverse climbing community makes it a more accessible space for everyone to enjoy.

In addition to climbing equipment, the gym will feature high quality fitness equipment and a community area that is envisioned to function as a co-working space, or just a “third place” where people in the community can spend time. They also plan to offer climbing-specific coaching and weightlifting coaching to members.

So far, the walls are fully designed and ready to get manufactured, and the team has received their first shipment of holds. Park especially has been busy with demolition work inside to prepare to build out the space.

Memberships are open now and for the first 250 who sign up early, there are a variety of benefits. Learn more at www.climbnora.com

Climbing outdoors often means having friends that can carry your pads and spot you for safety. Photo provided by Linh Nguyen.

While Climb Nora will have some commercial boards, others will include custom wooden pieces that add dimension to the face of the wall called volumes or boxes. Photo provided by Linh Nguyen.