Austin-based Crux Climbing Center recently opened its third location in Pflugerville, creating an inclusive indoor jungle gym for climbers of all ages and skill levels.

The backstory

Since the first Crux location opened in South Austin in 2016, co-owner Grace Nicholas said the Austin metro climbing community has been requesting a center in North Austin. Nicholas said the center had over 700 check-ins on the first day of its soft opening in September.

She said the center’s main focus is highlighting inclusivity in the climbing community. One way the business achieves this is by using a difficulty system ranked by colorful animals that correlates to the typical climbing difficulty scale.

“We really want everybody to be able to come in and have a route they can do like off the couch,” Nicholas said. “What’s great about our sport is it doesn’t discriminate on age, gender, sex, size—like we see it all.”


The details

The new location features auto belays, a lead climbing roof, permanent crack climbing lines, two lanes of speed climbing and 58-foot climbing walls—the tallest in all of Central Texas, said Nicholas.

The center also has the largest kids area out of all three locations.

Nicholas said the Pflugerville location in particular gives the business an opportunity to better serve its Be Empowered To Ascend program. The program works with adaptive climbing and is offered to individuals of all ages with physical or mental disabilities.


What’s special about it?

The center creates the perfect setting for an all-day retreat with work-from-home spaces, locker rooms, saunas, a lounge space, a fitness studio, a Spicy Boys Fried Chicken food truck and a soon-to-open Spokesman Coffee shop sharing the center’s outdoor patio.

Nicholas said the location plans to regularly host events including date nights, when two individuals can climb for $20, woman climb nights and member appreciation nights.

Quote of note


“We just want to keep growing as the community wants us to—keep being community stewards for climbing and be a place where people can hangout and gather. That’s all I can really hope for,” Nicholas said.