Excellent facility, but I haven't been impressed with the staff/owner. I thought I was gonna be blown away when I walked in and saw the place but I find myself still driving the 45 minutes up to the gym in Glens Falls instead of the 10 minutes to The Edge. First impression was a negative, I'm a military member and there's no discount. Fine, but there's a discount for college students. Not fine. Give the discounts to kids that are living the college life of partying and (maybe) going to class but not to the people in the line of fire for this country? Come on.
The routesetting is weak. Good moves if you're 5'11", but any shorter and those 5.10's become 5.12's, so being 5'10" I'm usually alright but the shorter folks I climb with are usually pretty peeved by the time we're done. We're all impressed with your ape index, but it's a gym. Set routes with some technique required, not just long reaches.
The main reason I avoid the gym is the abhorrently wrong information I've been told during a few lead certifications. I don't know who the main dude responsible for the education of his staff is, but he's an idiot. Here's the biggest offenders:
-you have to tighten the climber's knot as tight as possible before leaving the ground so the knot doesn't "untie itself while you climb" completely negating the force-reducing benefits of the knot tightening during a lead fall. When I brought up why a well-dressed but not fully tightened knot was beneficial I was told "you don't ever plan on falling, sometimes it just happens though" Mmhm
-Yosemite safety followthrough knot is unsafe because it causes the knot to "flip inside out, possibly breaking the rope" Those last 6000 falls I've taken on that followthrough must've just been luck. Stupid.
-After a full lead-cert for 4 people the kid doing the test let us know "I'm pretty sure that's it, I don't really know for sure, I'm a boulderer"

-A female staff member was giving a lead cert next to me and told the person she was certifying "I don't like being picked up during a lead fall so I usually anchor myself to the floor" This same girl told me she's been climbing for 9 years.

A few weeks ago a climber on lead fell from the top of the wall while clipping the last bolt (about 40 feet up) and hit the deck, fracturing several vertebrae in his neck. 100% belayer error from what the staff told me. Surprise, surprise. New leaders beware.

-A female staff member was giving a lead cert next to me and told the person she was certifying "I don't like being picked up during a lead fall so I usually anchor myself to the floor" This same girl told me she's been climbing for 9 years.

I see nothing wrong with that last statement. I climb with two of my daughters, both who are substantially lighter than I, and neither of them appreciate catching my lead falls. The smaller one anchors herself.

Was that during the youth SCS Regional comp? I heard there was a fall just like that and that the belayer immediately detached from the rope and ran out of the building not to be seen again. I also heard the kid was okay but I suppose still able to walk is okay to most climbers regardless of the actual damage.

I understand that college kids are poor, and that's the general reason why that discount is given, but the only difference between me and a college student is that instead of digging myself into a gigantic financial pit with student loans, I decided to serve my country and go that route for college money. If you're going to give somebody a discount for taking out ridiculous loans to party, skip class, sleep in, and enjoy the "college life" instead of spending 4 years doing something to show appreciation for the freedom they're exercising, the discount for the people spending those 4/6/8 years protecting that freedom better be there too.
And let's face it, if you've got 10 bucks to climb, you've probably got 12 to climb anyways.

Whoa, didn't see anyone had replied, sorry for the delay guys.

Anchoring is fine IF it's done intelligently. My girlfriend is my climbing partner and she's 70 pounds lighter than me. She still doesn't anchor, but if she didn't want to go too far up the wall she could anchor with a 'leash' to LIMIT how far she traveled upward. What I was shown at the gym was an already tight, static tope-rope style anchor to the floor.... which I shouldn't have to explain would remove the peak-force dampening effects of the belay coming off the ground and place that higher force on your last piece you placed. No thanks.

That SOUNDS like being dropped by a belayer is something that like.... happens during normal climbing trips? I've done some scary, long, hard climbing and I've NEVER factored my belayer as a point of failure, and they shouldn't be. The fact that that happened in a gym is ridiculous, someone there WATCHED that belayer and certified them good to go... An employee... told them they were good to belay. That's scary. There's nobody certifying people to go outside and do the same thing and it's a rarity to hear belayer's dropping people in accident reports.

Don't give this "holier than thou" shit about being a grunt. You chose this life. Most students actually study, especially when they're paying thousands per year for tuition , so quit watching your Hollywood trash and get a clue.

I always assumed college students get discounts not because they're poor, but because you want to get their future business when they have good jobs and aren't poor anymore. It's not like either the military or student discounts are terribly significant in the climbing industry - at least not that I've seen and I've looked at both in multiple locations. In the ski industry however...

I do think they are several Military communities in America that could host a very profitable climbing gym. I was consulting with one potiential client about such a location last year, he back out because of all the financial mess going on in America, but I believe now is a good time to make this happen.