How to do Incident Response in a Climbing Gym
- gheverly
- Oct 8
- 4 min read
If you run a climbing gym, an incident is going to occur. Someone is going to get hurt. Potentially seriously. This isn't an "if" situation, it's a "when". So the question is: WHEN this happens, are your staff ready? Are you ready? Is your business ready?
With over 20 years in the industry not just as an operator and consultant, but as a customer at climbing gyms all over the world, I have been really shocked at how unprepared most staff are for incident response. And it all comes down to this one thing:
Reps
Painting the Picture - A Scene All Too Common
This is a true story:
Not too long ago I was at a well known climbing gym. They have multiple locations and have been around for quite some time. I was sitting on the mats between attempts on some boulder problem I am not strong enough to do, when I heard a snap and a scream. I turned around to see a person whom had just fallen and badly broken their leg. Everyone just stared. The Search & Rescue side of me kicked in and I ran over and began offering assistance. I called for staff, who came over and....stared at me...waiting for me to tell them what to do. I had already dialed 911 and had them on speaker phone as I was caring for this person's lower extremity injury. I asked the staff to clear the area and to await paramedics. I asked if they had any incident response protocols and they said they didn't know.
Skip ahead a bit, the ambulance arrived, I handed off primary care to the medic and then had a conversation with the staff member who had managed to find a dusty clipboard with an incident response document printed on a sheet of paper. I helped them fill it out, asked if they had ice packs, an AED or any kind of first aid. They showed me a dusty first aid kit. It had some band aids in it. They did not have an AED.
I am not joking, about 2 months later I was climbing at another of this gym's locations and almost the exact same thing happened.
So what is the problem here?
Staff members went full deer-in-headlights when the incident occured, creating a bad experience for the injured customer, and resulting in a less than ideal response to an injury. Upon digging a bit further it turns out this gym does have a reasonable incident response SOP, and all staff are trained on it as part of their onboarding.
The problem is the staff aren't going to remember a thing they learned their second day on the job 6 months ago. They needs reps. They need to practice this skill of responding to an injury just like any other skill
Climbing Gym Incident Response Done Right
Taking from my Search & Rescue background and some other areas of life, there are some key things gym operators can learn about how to respond to an incident well.
Train, retrain, and drill your staff on incident response protocols.
Always call 911.
Make your incident response systems user friendly and easy to access/use
Step 1: Train & Retrain on Incident Response
Remember when you were a kid and had to tornado and fire drills in school? Repeatedly? Hold hands, walk out to a designated area in the parking lot? Get under your desk, whatever it was. The reason they did those was so that when a fire actually happens, they don't have pure chaos. Those reps make a difference. Believe it or not, it's the same thing with your climbing gym and responding to injuries. Training people on an SOP the week of their initial onboarding is nice for checking a box, a lot less so for actually making someone capable of responding appropriately in the moment.
In my SAR career, our rescue team trains every single week, TWICE! We train on fundamentals of our various response protocols, medical protocols, etc. Why? So that when we actually get the rescue mission, we don't panic. We know what to do and we can do it efficiently.
HOW:
First of all, have a standard operating procedure for incident response that includes:
Injuries
Auto belay incidents
Natural Disasters
Fire
Anything else relevant
Make this a part of your onboarding and make sure your SOP stays up to date
Schedule an incident response training at least quarterly. Make it fun, close the gym for half a day and run various scenarios that staff respond to. Have scavenger hunts: where is the AED? Where is the fire extinguisher? Where is the auto-belay rescue kit? Etc etc.
Make it a requirement that all staff are BLS trained and re-certified annually
Step 2: Always Call 911
With very few exceptions where the ambulances are run by completely private organizations, neither you or the injured party should be charged if advanced medical services are refused or not provided.
So when in doubt, call 911 and get medical, fire or law enforcement support en route ASAP.
Step 3: Make Incident Response Systems User Friendly
The tech in our industry, broadly speaking, is woefully behind the rest of the retail/service world. This is true also of how we respond to, document, and report incidents in our industry. But that should not stop you from creating a process and system that works, and works efficiently. (HINT: The dusty clipboard with the print out is not the way.)
HOW:
Your SOP should clearly enunciate when, where, how and what to document. And it should be easily accessible. Solutions I have implemented successfully include:
Incident response protocols and forms are digital and easily accessible, ensure they walk the user through what to input, etc.
An iPad at the front desk exclusively for this purpose
QR Codes throughout the facility that any staff member can scan to take them to an online incident response form on their mobile device
Incident response forms include anyone to be notified and how
Collaborating with insurance providers on what info they need and when
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