UKC

How much do route setters get paid?   

What started out as a woody in the spare bedroom has evolved into the entire room over the course of the pandemic.   I lack originality in my route setting and I am not very good at setting projects to train on so I was thinking it might be nice to get a real route setter into set some boulder problems.

Does anyone have any idea at what sort of cost I would be looking at?    Peak based of that makes a difference.

A freelance setter will normally charge at least £130 a day for a commercial wall but i'm sure there would be a few keen local setters would do it for cheaper. Maybe ask at your local wall before lockdown starts.

This doesn't answer you question but... My approach to setting at home is to get all the holds on the wall then start to make problems once everything is up. When I've tried to build a problem hold by hold its never as good.

Also good fun (although not from Thursday) is to get your mates round and get them to help you set problems. A few beers is cheaper than a route setter too. Setters are probably desperate for work right now though so good on you if you get someone in to set for you. 

I would say more like £160+ for a day and probably a lot more for a well "known" person / setter.

Best approach i can suggest is a scatter gun approach to your holds and then register with Eat Spray Love app.  Then join Homewall Problem Swap group on facebook.

With a bit of effort and setting a few climbs for others we got 100 climbs set for us on a system board.  With the 2 x foot options plus a mirror option on our board we ended up with 400 different climbs.  They were surprisingly good climbs too.

Thanks, I might give that a try.

I am going to try out the app but I still fancy have some proper routes set so if any route setters are reading this and fancy a day setting in the Peak please message me.

Mark

£150-£200 for the day for experienced setters. There's lots of freelance setters knocking about now though, as it's very in-vogue and is the go-to career for the #van life crowd. You might be able to find a relatively inexperienced setter for about £80/£100 but you'd need to be moving in the right circles to know if they're any good or not. 

Ask some mates to come around and set some problems for you to try - they'll know your standard better than strangers.  Also, maybe google climbing system training.  

What are you trying to achieve?

If you want to get stronger/better at climbing then problems don't need to be particularly inventive or cool, just basic - if you are poor at pockets and core, set a sequence of basic pocket moves with the holds wide apart horizontally so you have to climb very body open, if you are bad at vertical crimps, set a basic line of bad crimps on the vert and run laps...

If the wall is for you to just have fun primarily, get each of your mates to set 1 or 2 problems and you will end up with loads of random things that you can try and depending on how well they work out you can add or remove a hold from them, make the good sloper into a bad sloper, rotate a jug, etc. etc.

I don't know how the covid rules south of the border affect all your plans but I would imagine that having a mate in to set a couple of problems and having a setter in to set a couple of problems would fall into the same category of restriction so it shouldn't make any real difference.

I really don't think you need a professional route setter for a limited home wall. Ofc if you decide you do, other people in the thread have you covered.