Our stories make us who we are
This is the story of Uplift Climbing
By Andrew Hou
I found rock climbing at summer camp in Maine when I was 12 years old. Born in the US to parents from Singapore and Malaysia, I moved to Asia when I was 5. My parents did everything they could to make sure my brothers and I “felt American”, which meant trips to the States during the summer and bringing Boy Scout handbooks back to Kuala Lumpur. When we moved back to the States, 14 year-old Andrew saw Mount Rainier for the first time and thought “wow, I wonder if anybody’s ever been to the top!” Through the Boy Scouts and the Mountaineers, I eventually found myself on the top of Tahoma, and many other Cascade peaks. Sport climbing and bouldering followed.
Like many others before me, climbing became the vehicle that helped me find my love for the outdoors. I spent the summer between high school and college climbing at the local gym 4 days a week, and climbing outside the other 3. I worked and routeset at gyms through college, eventually graduating from the University of Washington.
I spent the next 10 years working in tech, but kept one foot in climbing. I’d routeset as often as I could get the opportunity to, and would hike loads of gear to do crag maintenance and trail building. I’d teach friends how to climb on the weekend, telling them that I didn’t care if they were beginners or advanced climbers, I just wanted them to try hard. Tech was a stable career, but I yearned to share my love for climbing with others in a meaningful way. I’d tell people that I was planning on opening my own gym someday, thinking that if I said it often enough maybe I would actually leave my stable job and take the leap of faith.
In 2017, after an exceptionally frustrating week at work followed by a weekend of rejuvenating climbing, I finally turned my words into actions. Years of writing business plans, courting investors, financial projections, touring buildings, interviewing contractors, finally culminated in a perfect spot in Shoreline. We signed a lease, ready to build.
It was March 2020.
Building a gym
It turns out that when opening a climbing gym, you’re lucky if you get to go climbing. And when doing it in the midst of a global pandemic, you’re lucky if anything goes your way at all. Signing a lease just before all construction stopped meant rapid negotiations with the landlord to ensure we had some protections while unable to build. Even when the government allowed our build to proceed, there were months of uncertainty around the price of plywood, unpredictable shipping delays, and the ever present fear of a COVID case shutting down our jobsite.
Financing was by far the worst. Climbing gyms are already a niche industry, but the addition of COVID meant our bank pulled out right as we were about to sign the lease. Once shelter-in-place was announced, my tech job (that I was trying to keep for as long as possible) laid me off along with 25% of the company. Worst of all, as the pandemic progressed, we didn’t qualify for PPP loans or any significant government assistance. Those were only for existing companies, not “new” ones — it didn’t matter that I had been working on Uplift for years at that point. I thought about giving up. Uplift was now hanging on by a thread.
As it is with all good things, it was people that made this dream come true. A family friend found me a new bank that closed a loan in just three weeks, ensuring that our build could continue. A leader at church stepped in to be our structural engineer; he kept our project timely by pushing Uplift’s work to the top of the to-do list at his firm. My brothers designed our logo, website, and merch. Family, friends, and neighbors showed up to pull up old carpet, paint bathrooms, and donate furniture. From the beginning of Uplift, climbing has been the avenue by which people lift each other up.
Walls and holds going up made my excitement uncontainable. Even the second COVID shut-down in Dec 2020 barely dampened my spirits as we barreled towards the finish line. And while I had dreamed of a grand opening party with music, crowds, and balloons, we ended up opening under reservation-only at 25% capacity. But we still had balloons. February 5, 2021 will be a day I remember forever.
Summer ‘08 when I spent 4 days a week climbing in the gym and the other 3 outside was one of the best climbing seasons of my life. I had been bitten hard by the climbing bug and couldn’t get enough. Following stronger climbers around the gym, I mimicked their beta and training plans. I begged them to take me outside, resulting in sending my first 5.9, 5.10, and 5.11 all in the same season. It didn’t matter that I was newer to climbing, I just wanted so badly to try hard, and climbing rewarded me by showing me what I was really capable of.
Uplift Climbing was created to capture that season and share it. To do so, we have two tenets:
Always try hard
We serve rock climbers.
No matter how hard we climb, always try hard
This gym is built for people to find climbing as more than just recreation, but also as a sport. Everything about Uplift is purpose-built to serve climbers looking to push themselves, using climbing to reveal what they’re truly capable of. To learn that trying hard and improving yourself is both challenging and rewarding. Whether you’re brand new, a seasoned expert, a family with kids, a lonely teenager, or anyone at all, we want to share climbing with you and help you find that drive.
Everything about us puts climbers first.
But Uplift is also not about climbing — we’re about how climbing brings us together, celebrating each other’s successes, and supporting each other through our failures.
Climbing moves our bodies and our emotions, bringing us to highs and lows. It teaches us when to dig deep and when to let go, and helps us learn that growing is best done with others, rather than alone. It stays that consistent friend as we live our lives. Climbing doesn’t just help us find love for the outdoors, but also our love for one another.
Throughout all the challenges that Uplift has faced, watching our gym’s impact in the lives of others has kept me going. And as long as we keep putting climbers, that is, putting _people_ first, I know that things will work out for good, even if it’s in unexpected ways. But in the midst of the good and the bad, Uplift has been one of the greatest joys of my life.
I’m so grateful that I’m still here and that you’re here with me.