As regular as the tides, the flood of tech-industry workers arrives at the rock climbing gym at Mission Cliffs every weekday at 5 p.m., peaking at 6 and ebbing at 7.
“It’s another techie hub,” said Kristi Matteson, who works in Google’s San Francisco office, “but I like it.”
A regular, Matteson, on a recent Wednesday, is dangling in the air to figure out where to lean and where to leverage to make her way up the five-story walls. Around her, a crowd of 200 to 300 gather, many of them reading their laptops as they change footwear.
It’s a familiar early evening scene at Mission Cliffs, the first climbing gym in San Francisco when it opened in 1995. It took off with the dot-com boom.
“It was all friends telling friends,” said Franco Faraguna, a retired SFPD officer and one of the original members of Mission Cliffs, who has worked at the front desk for years.
Attendance declined with the dot-com bust, but now it has come back, likely spurred by the Olympics and the National Geographic documentary “Free Solo,” according to Mission Cliffs staff. Currently, there are four climbing gyms in San Francisco and more than a dozen in the Bay Area. Mission Cliffs is priced at $95 a month, and aficionados say it’s worth every penny.
“The people that are coming here are much better climbers overall, stronger and more experienced,” said Jacob DeAngeles, a sales manager at PR software company Cision. He used to climb at Rocknasium, a gym in Davis, California, where he said the college students who came and went brought a different vibe.
After Mission Cliffs, parent company Touchstone Climbing has since opened a new location every year or two; that number now stands at 15, the majority in the Bay Area.
Kristi Matteson, who works at Google’s San Francisco office. Photo by Yujie Zhou, June 28, 2023. 
A flood of techies arrive at Mission Cliffs every weekday at 5 p.m., peaking at 6 p.m. and ebbing at 7 p.m. Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 19, 2023. 
Kristi Matteson, who works at Google’s San Francisco office. Photo by Yujie Zhou, June 28, 2023.
These days, according to desk staffer Maria, Mission Cliffs gets 900 visitors a day, at least half of whom are employed in tech, she ventured.
Companies book introduction-to-climbing classes for their team-building events, and as soon as one person in the company climbs at Mission Cliffs, “they go back to work and go, ‘Hey man, let’s do a company lunch or picnic or something like that,’” said Faraguna, who predicted that soon he will see “15 of their friends” buying day passes.
For many, the climbing gym has become a place to build friendships as well as muscles. After work, “it’s either here, or the bar,” said Richard Pastor, a chemist at Genentech, the South San Francisco biotechnology giant. He’s been climbing at Mission Cliffs for 10 years, and says his main social circle now comes from climbing.
“This is a great place to wind down in a very healthy way.”
Pastor, like most other climbers at Mission Cliffs, does top-rope climbing, which requires two people — the climber tied to one end of the rope, and the other person managing the rope from below. But Pastor usually visits alone. At the beginning of the decade, the front-desk staff used a megaphone to find him a match, and now he usually runs into an old friend, often before he’s finished warming up.
Friends made at Mission Cliffs often take their newfound passion outside. Pastor and his friends who work at Google, Adobe, Tesla and various startups take regular climbing trips to Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Lake Tahoe, and farther afield to France, Spain and Italy, even to Thailand’s TonSai Beach.
With a young, fit population, climbing can also nurture romance. Nick Stroup, a coach at Mission Cliffs, believes that it’s the social aspects of climbing that appeal to techies, a need that can’t be met by many other forms of workout, like yoga, where everyone listens in silence, or weightlifting, where people put on headphones to create social boundaries.
Faraguna met his wife here, and Sam Bigio, 28, a software engineer at Primer.ai, had one of his first dates with girlfriend Heather Der here. Der was already an experienced climber, and he was a beginner.
“I think it’s a bad first date, actually,” Bigio said, as Der raised an eyebrow. “You don’t really get to know anyone, because when you’re belaying, you don’t communicate.”
“I think it’s a good date,” Der disputed, “because you have to climb, and I feel like you have a lot to talk about on the date.”
“She’s good at it, too,” added Bigio.
A flood of techies arrive at Mission Cliffs every weekday at 5 p.m., peaking at 6 p.m. and ebbing at 7 p.m. Photo by Yujie Zhou, June 27, 2023. 
Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 19, 2023. 
Now Richard Pastor, a chemist at Genentech, usually runs into an old friend, often before he’s finished warming up. Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 19, 2023. 
Jacob DeAngeles, a sales manager at PR software company Cision. Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 19, 2023. 
Franco Faraguna, a retired SFPD officer and one of the original members of Mission Cliffs, who has worked at the front desk for years. Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 19, 2023.
There are occupational reasons that climbing appeals to techies, some say. Climbing is like solving a puzzle: How to get to the top of a 50-foot climb on a skinny 100-foot rope; the route up a climbing wall is called a “problem” in mountaineering parlance. Climbers often discuss and share solutions, just as they would in the office.
It’s not boring, like some gym workouts, said LinkedIn data analyst Bhairavi Mehta, 32, who was cooling down while her husband and another friend climbed. “It’s a little different every time you come, because there’s new problems and new routes to solve.”
The quantifiable climbing difficulty level is also inherently attractive to techies, according to Bigio. Mission Cliffs, like many other climbing gyms, employs the Yosemite Decimal System where the top-rope climbing routes are numbered from 5.0 to 5.15. Most climbers are comfortable solving routes up to 5.10. Routes 5.10c onward become exponentially harder.
While some techies are here for fun, others have their climbing “project,” the routes they have yet to figure out. They know they have to rush before the route disappears forever — the 200-odd top-rope routes reset every three months or so, according to Faraguna.
In a way, it’s the tech ethic transplanted to the gym. “You’re sharing space with people,” said Stroup, “you’re doing the same climbs, you watch them do something that you’re trying to do, and you see them do it differently than you.”
Love to see climbing highlighted! Some now-professional climbers like Ethan Pringle (https://www.mountainhardwear.com/inspire/our-culture/athletes/ethan-pringle-athlete-bio.html) got their start climbing at Mission Cliffs, and other groups like Camp Mendocino also go to Mission Cliffs to climb: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq6Fej_P7CC/?hl=en
The gym also hosts a number of affinity nights for queer folks, LatinX folks, FilipinX folks, and more. Climbing (and Mission Cliffs) is not just for “techies”, and there is a large distribution of identities within “techie”.
Walking to the gym you see “Techie Scum” painted on the sidewalk (same in Dogpatch too), so there’s definitely a strong perception in the city that techies and climbers are synonymous, so I’d hoped that this article might dig a little deeper beyond perpetuating this narrative. More folks than just tech industry workers like to solve problems and do critical thinking 🙂
Complete agree with Smore’s comment. The word “techie” is a) somewhat derogatory in itself, as it’s mostly been used in a negative context in SF. and b) there’s a very diverse base of climbers at MC.
I love these people in our hood! They’re not selling stolen hood, using it dealing, or breaking into our cars! Keep them welcomed-!