The Mini Moonboard

Danny Inman wrote:

I want to give Victor and Bluesmanboards a big shout out for a fantastic product. Below is a pic of my new Mini Moonboard with the 2025 hold set, bluesmanboards frame, and the Organic Climbing Home Wall Base Pad, which fits perfectly between the legs of the Bluesman frame.

I'm getting tempted to upgrade my mini with this frame.  It's a smart approach for a home board frame.  I've got a few questions about it if Danny, Victor, or anyone else with experience could weight in:

-How stable is it?  Does it tend to sway when climbing on it?

-How is it adjusted?  It it a reasonably easy 1 person job to make a couple angle changes per session, or is it more of a long term setting?

-How does the mini climb at 20 degrees?  I'm wondering if this could provide boulders in the ~V1 range to make it accessible to my wife or allow me a gentle warm up and endurance training.

-Is the height of the horizonal legs an issue?  It's not unusual that I fall around the edge of the board and they look like they might be hard to pad.

Aaron Moses wrote:

I'm getting tempted to upgrade my mini with this frame.  It's a smart approach for a home board frame.  I've got a few questions about it if Danny, Victor, or anyone else with experience could weight in:

-How stable is it?  Does it tend to sway when climbing on it?

-How is it adjusted?  It it a reasonably easy 1 person job to make a couple angle changes per session, or is it more of a long term setting?

-How does the mini climb at 20 degrees?  I'm wondering if this could provide boulders in the ~V1 range to make it accessible to my wife or allow me a gentle warm up and endurance training.

-Is the height of the horizonal legs an issue?  It's not unusual that I fall around the edge of the board and they look like they might be hard to pad.

Hi Aaron,

I'm happy to answer your questions.

As far as stability goes, the frame is rock solid.

Because the frame is adjusted a couple of degrees on each side at a time, changing the angle every session would be tedious. It's more of a long term setting IMO.

With an 8' ceiling the minimum angle is 25 degrees, so I've never climbed on my board at less than that. I would expect that the V3 benchmarks  to still be harder than the V1s that you would find in the gym at 20 degrees. Moon has extremely sandbagged ratings on the Mini. You could probably do V1s if you used 'any hands' and 'any feet'. My wife has come up with exercises that she does at 25 degrees, but these are not really climbing.

The horizontal legs, what I refer to as the feet, are 3" tall rectangular tubes and are pretty easy to pad. Though I do take this precaution when I think that I might fall outside of the footprint of the frame, falling outside the footprint has never been an issue for me.

Victor

Aaron Moses wrote:

-How does the mini climb at 20 degrees?  I'm wondering if this could provide boulders in the ~V1 range to make it accessible to my wife or allow me a gentle warm up and endurance training.

I have an adjustable mini (not a blues man board) which I climb on at 25 degrees all the time.  I have the original school plus wood A, B, and C holds.  I would agree with previous response that I'm not sure you could get a true V1 with the moon holds.  To me, the V3 benchmarks (which are sandbags) feel like gym V2 or V2+ when the board is at 25 degrees.  If you went down to 20 degrees it would be a little easier and if you sprayed on big jugs between the moon holds, then probably could have real V1 problems. 

Thanks for the input Victor and Clayton.  It looks like we'll be passing through CO in Aug, so being able to pick up the frame might just seal the deal for me.

I'll reach out via your business email Victor.

Thanks Aaron. I actually expected more people to be picking up the frames locally when I started making them, since Boulder is such a great place to climb.

Moon just dropped a new video on the Mini with the 2025 set. youtube.com/watch?v=wDB6Lg4…

Victor Creazzi wrote:

Moon just dropped a new video on the Mini with the 2025 set. youtube.com/watch?v=wDB6Lg4…

Really fun seeing them get on the the Mini! Except for the prospect of flagging westward through a glass door, or dynoing eastward off the balcony :-D

Lest anyone be misled by Mr. Moon's assessment of the Mini as "one grade easier than the fullsize [2024]," it's worth noting that they picked some of the problems with the most repeats, which tend to be the easiest at the grade.