Chalkboard paint on your climbing wall?

[erick]

I have heard of people using chalkboard paint on the wall face then marking routes with chalk markers. What do you think, anyone else tried this?

[Lundy]

I saw this at a gym in El Salvador, and it didn't work too well, as it's too easy for the chalk to get wiped off or become difficult to follow. IF you were diligent about it, though, it might work decently well. I'm not sure what the advantage is over tape, though - if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

[MarkAnderson]

I'm thinking 'fingernails on a chalk board' every time you dyno for a hold

[erick]

Sept 15, 2016 10:14:33 GMT -7 Lundy said:

I'm not sure what the advantage is over tape, though

Seems easier to use a chalk marker than tape everything all the time

[RichF]

An interesting article about home training tools: eveningsends.com/battle-of-the-boards-moon-hang-and-campus-a-home-gym-review/

Towards the end he talks about his Moon Board, and using chalkboard paint.  It seems like he wrote the article shortly after building the wall, and was still psyched about the chalk to mark problems.  But below, in the comments, he adds this:

"I like the chalkboard paint, but different colored chalk doesn't "pop" quite as much as I was hoping. To solve that I started using an alphabet lettering system for my problems, and I record which problems are which grades on a separate adjacent white board. So all the holds marked with the letter "A" is a 6c+, for example. When I'm doing my workouts, it's kind of nice to say, I'm going to do problems "A to P" in order, then move on ...

The big problem with the chalk board paint is that your chalky fingers end up marking the board up a lot ... but there is actually some training benefit to that, which I hadn't anticipated. You can see really easily where your hands hit the wall/hold. My buddy was climbing with me, and we noticed that his accuracy freakin' sucks. His fingers would hit the board three inches further than the hold, then drag down until he actually latched onto it. The less finger chalk you add to the board, the better your accuracy and coordination. So I've actually ended up liking this a lot."