High Point Climbing and Fitness

High Point's downtown gym has the blue walls bolted to the outside of the building on Broad Street, where climbers hang over the pavement four storeys up and the tourists stop to watch. It is the most recognisable thing about climbing in this city, and it earns second place on one fact alone: it is the only indoor lead wall in Chattanooga.

Inside there are 45-foot rope walls in the pit, over a hundred boulder problems and auto belays. If you climb on a rope and you want to keep climbing through January, this is the answer by default rather than by argument - Synergy has nothing to clip into.

There is a second Chattanooga gym at Riverside, on Appling Street, and a third up in Cleveland. Riverside publishes no figures of its own - its page repeats the Broad Street description word for word - so go downtown if what you came for is the height.

A day pass is $24, or $31 with shoes and harness; a month is $84, and $72 if you are a student, a senior, military or in the industry. There is a fitness floor, yoga, classes, kids' camps and teams.

It is worth knowing this is no longer a local business in the way the sign suggests. High Point started in Chattanooga and now runs eight gyms across Tennessee, Alabama and Florida. That scale is why the downtown gym can afford a wall on the side of a building, and it is also why the bouldering and the training kit have not kept pace with the gym down the road.