State of Climbing Report
7.7 million US participants, 4.4% of Americans climb indoors. Indoor is 58% men, 42% women. 82% white. 65% between 19-35. Spend $169 million on gear. 478 climbing gyms. Average visit is 2.3 hours. Outdoors majority of accidents on ascent. Biggest cause is slip on rock/ice (50%).
The study found that the rate of accidents among climbing gym patrons is .007 per 1,000 visitor hours. Compared to an activity like CrossFit (2.3 injuries per 1,000 athlete training hours12), this is an exceedingly low rate of injury Nearly seven in ten facilities reported accidents among patrons in 2017, but the average number of accidents was only 2.2 for the year