Build it and they'll come — in January

Last summer, Greg Paul wasn't feeling all that encouraged when he walked around the 20,000-square-foot climbing gym he'd just built in Sandy and kept bumping into, well, nobody.

He'd poured a healthy portion of his life's savings and an even healthier portion of his passion into a cutting-edge facility rivaling any man-made mountains in the world. He had bouldering walls, traditional rope walls more than four stories high with a variety of overhangs. He even had walls with slits to mimic slot-canyon climbing in southern Utah. All of it made out of the finest indoor wall material imported from Bulgaria.

But after he built it, nobody came. Almost nobody, at any rate. The place bore a strong resemblance to Times Square — at 4 in the morning.

But then, in August, when the semiannual Outdoor Retailer Summer Market convened at the Salt Palace just up the road in Salt Lake City, he got a glimmer of hope.

Some of the folks in town for the convention had heard about his new gym and drove to Sandy to check it out. Upon seeing the massive structure, they did everything but bow down and worship it. A man from Turkey called it "The Temple of Climbing." They asked Greg if it would be possible to hold a tournament there.

His answer: the sooner the better.

But not right then, they told him.

That would be crazy. It was summer.

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Looking back on it now, as Momentum Indoor Climbing braces for the prestigious USA Climbing Adult National Championships that will run today and tomorrow, it's obvious to Greg Paul that perhaps opening his climbing Taj Mahal at the end of May — right at the start of summer — wasn't the brightest decision of his life.

"We really struggled when the weather was good; the summer was tough on us," he said. "But as soon as that first storm hit in September, I started breathing easier."

It takes bad weather, it turns out, to bring good climbers inside.

That would include some of the nation's very best climbers who will be challenging Momentum's walls in this weekend's nationals. The tournament is being held in conjunction with the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market at the Salt Palace.

Paul and his general manager, Jeff Pedersen, have been inundated with compliments during preparations for the competition. When USA Climbing's route-setting experts Molly Beard and Kevin Branford first saw the walls earlier this week, they were rendered nearly speechless.