Who are Core Climbing?
Core Climbing is a relatively new hold designer and manufacturer, formed by three keen climbers, all of whom have served an apprenticeship with various long established climbing hold manufacturers. The company is based near Sheffield, in the UK’s Peak District National Park, and all Core’s holds are conceived, designed and manufactured in their nearby Chesterfield factory.

Core Holds Image Gallery

Core holds and fingerboards are made from reinforced composite resin, which makes their holds glorious to use, hardwearing and gives them a high integral strength – all Core Climbing Holds conform and exceed - EN 1 2572-3, Artificial Climbing Structures - Part 3: Safety requirements and test methods for climbing holds.

The inspiration for the various hold ranges comes from many years spent climbing and travelling, as well as the team’s work in previous professional lives – working with the likes of renowned hold manufacturer Bleaustone. This, combined with a passion for indoor climbing, has resulted in the superb range of interesting and often unique climbing holds they currently produce.

Core's Categories

One of the primary aims of the Core range was to capture the essence of different venues and rock types, to as they say “bring the outdoors onto your climbing wall”. This is exhibited well by their range of products consisting of four different categories of holds: Font, Grit, Granite and Core. The holds’ variations are all subtle, and Core use a careful approach to ensure skin friendliness is not compromised. A wall offering a comprehensive range of the various categories would also help the user gain familiarity with previously unclimbed on rock types.

‘Font’ Range
They say: Designed with inspiration from the sandstone bouldering mecca of the Fontainebleau Forest, France: smooth lines and the classic Fontainebleau shapes and textures found throughout the forest.

We say: A lush range of great holds splattered with familiar font-like patina designs. These holds have a reasonably smooth, skin friendly texture and come in a great array of interesting shapes and designs. Whilst all the holds in the Font category are superb, we particularly liked the pinches.

‘Grit’ Range
They Say: Designed with inspiration from closer a field: the gritstone of Britain. These holds offer: ripples and breaks, with curving lines and the occasional pebble – inspired by Yorkshire and the Peak District.

We say: Seemingly quite aggressive to the touch, these holds (as you would imagine) offer excellent friction and are superb in the sloper and pinch categories. In spite of the abrasive surfaces they are also pretty forgiving, in terms of wearing the skin. The slopers are brilliant!

‘Granite’ Range
They Say: This line takes it features from the granite bouldering of Magic Wood, Switzerland and Kjuge Kull, Sweden. The features include: angular and geometric with shiny quartz style bands, think Magic Wood and Kjuge combined.

We Say: Generally more angular and often sporting gneiss-like crystalline stripes, these holds are much more akin to the older school holds of yesteryear - in feel if not looks. That said, they are still well thought out and will be appreciated by those who like to crimp or 'drag' everything as they ‘bear down’ to victory.

‘Core’ Range
They Say: Core’s own range of simple indoor inspired holds, featuring smooth shapes and textures – all embossed with the Core logo. Each hold has a symmetrical partner – useful for ‘systems’ style training.

We Say: Despite the fact these holds are more training orientated we found the hold shapes to be a bit a little less user-friendly on our 50 degree training board – compared to the Bleaustone training hold range - with the crimps generally being too poor/slopey and some of the pockets having slightly brutal edges. Conversely, on a standard climbing wall or shallower angled (30 degree or below) board, the very attributes we are stating to be negatives, would no doubt make for some interesting to use holds. Overall nice holds, particularly the pinches, with a grippy but skin-friendly texture. However, be aware of your final desired angle of use, as this will dictate how much you get out of many of the holds in this category.

Coming Soon
There is a new range of mini-slopers and micro jugs available in the Font range; these will also be coming through in the other styles (Granite, Grit etc.) soon. Accordingly, we will hopefully have these in stock in the very near future.

One possible hole in the current range is a training specific range, offering a selection of simple, smaller shapes and symmetrical designs, ideal for hardcore users of home boards and purpose built training walls. According to Core this concept is in the pipeline, and we will stock the full range once available.

Right: Testing Core holds at the 'Boardroom' - a 50 degree training board.

All of Core’s ranges’ have been subdivided into sets, based on hold type. Each range comprises a set of Large Jugs, Medium Jugs, Mini Jugs, Easy Slopers, Hard Slopers, Pockets, Pinches, Crimps and footholds (both bolt-on and screw-on). At present Core do not actively sell to retail outlets – primarily selling direct to commercial climbing walls – and their actual set sizes tend to be quite large. We took on the brand as; although it has involved us breaking the sets down ourselves, into more retail friendly packages (2 to 10 holds), and photographing every subset individually, we felt that the quality and design of the holds was so good it was the worth the extra effort, to bring these superb grips to home wall users. We are (at the time of writing) the only UK retailer stocking Core climbing holds.

Purchase Core Climbing Holds here.