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Forty years ago, there was not a single purpose-built climbing gym in the U.S. In 1987, Seattle’s Vertical Club opened and a year later, the Portland Rock Gym launched. But the concept of a profitable indoor climbing gym was far from proven. This is the story of the person whose vision and determination would revolutionize climbing gyms as we know them today.

Peter Mayfield was a climbing prodigy. At 16 years old, in 1978, he was repeating the hardest free climbs in Yosemite. He went on to establish some of the hardest aid routes on the Valley’s big walls. By the age of 19, he was guiding for the prestigious Yosemite Mountaineering School, and became chief guide a year later. When sport climbing competitions began in the late 1980s, Mayfield participated in the first ever Snowbird climbing competition as well as Jeff Lowe’s national competitions.

In 1988, Mayfield formed a guiding cooperative with legends Kim Schmitz and Jim Bridwell, but by his mid-twenties, he was looking for a job that would keep him closer to home. So when Bridwell returned from a trip to Europe with posters and magazines of climbing walls going up in France, Mayfield knew he’d found his next venture.

At the time, the walls in France were closer to artwork in public spaces than purpose-built climbing structures. It was around that time that the Vertical Club—a space for experienced climbers to train—went up, but Mayfield had something completely different in mind. As chief guide of the Yosemite Mountaineering School, he didn’t just want to create a place for himself and his buddies to get stronger. “I had this serious career of turning people onto this sport,” reflects Mayfield. “I was really thinking [about] kids, corporate programs … The word gym wasn’t even in my mind. It was more like an indoor climbing institute.”

With the popularity of indoor climbing gyms these days, it’s hard to imagine what it was like in the late ’80s, when climbing itself was still very much a niche activity. Mayfield knew that to keep the gym lights on, he’d need to attract more than just his hardcore climbing buddies.

Then there was the problem with California’s legendary great weather. Mayfield was skeptical that climbers would want to climb indoors on days when the sun was shining, because unlike Seattle and Portland, you could climb outdoors virtually year-round. So his marketing plan was also designed to get non-climbers to come to his gym. He wanted to build a place where “10,000 eight-year-old girls could try something they never dreamed of.”

“That was my pitch,” Mayfield says.

The economics of the first commercial climbing gym

Mayfield found his first investor while guiding an ascent of Alaska’s Moose’s Tooth. Tent-bound by storms for days, he discussed his climbing gym dreams with his clients. At the end of the expedition, as they were splitting up at the Oakland Airport, one of the clients asked him what he needed to start his business. He replied that he needed money for a phone line. The client pulled out his wallet and gave him $200. “I literally got handed two C-notes to start my business,” he remembers. He used that money to put in a Pacific Bell phone line in his mother’s basement in Berkeley and got to work.

“I got no positive reaction from the [climbing] industry at all,” remembers Mayfield. “I was pretty connected because I climbed with Bridwell. I met with the CEO of The North Face. I met with the CEO of Marmot. I met with the president of REI. They all said ‘it will never work. It makes sense in Seattle where it rains. Who would ever climb indoors in California?”

Mayfield even sent his business plan to Yvon Chouinard. “He was very polite and gave me some good advice,” Mayfield recalls. “He did not invest. None of them invested. But he kind of got what I was talking about.” (Chouinard did tell Mayfield that he should try to sell milkshakes: “If you can nail it with the youth, you will kick ass.”)

So Mayfield widened his net, contacting ”everybody in Silicon Valley who had ever climbed” and raised half a million dollars with 48 limited partners, essentially a large group of $5,000 investors. He stalled for a while, dealing with the mountain of paperwork associated with creating such a high volume of limited partnerships. But in the midst of his fundraising, he produced the Great Outdoor Adventure Fair

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