Photo: YouTube/bgoertemiller
Daniel's first route set in the 60ft section of the
gym.There are some big things going down in Atlanta, Georgia, aside from 8 million gallons of water at the aquarium, 30 acres of botanical gardens in Piedmont Park, and CNN and Coca-Cola corporate HQs.

Photo: Urban Climber / Kate McGinnis
Atlanta is also the home to 30,000 square feet of indoor climbable terrain at Stone Summit Climbing and Fitness Center. Walls allowing 30-foot-plus whips, routes that -all counted up- contain more than 2,000 quick draws, and there's even a climbable dinosaur with a built-in slide. From our perspective, that's huge (and damn fun).

Photo: Urban Climber / Kate McGinnis
Stone Summit opened June 19 to a crowd of more than 600 people. At 45,000 total square feet, Stone Summit is the largest climbing gym in the U.S., taking up nearly the same space as a football field. More than bringing a new physical venue for climbing, the folks at Stone Summit are hoping to advance other aspects of the sport as well.

Urban Climber's Genna Ord spoke to co-owner Daniel Luke about the visible and conceptive aspects behind this behemoth of a gym.

What inspired you to open this gym? A lot of it is just trying to grow the community here in Atlanta; we felt like there was a need for it. What sparked our interest is that I have some history in competition climbing, and so did my business partner's children, and we saw some things we felt like we could make a little bit better. That was the driving force behind how we designed our facility. At the same time, we wanted to make sure we had an area that could start with the absolute beginning and educate them.

Read the rest of the interview here, via Urban Climber Magazine.

Here's a vid of Daniel setting and climbing the first route in the 60-foot section.