“Yangshuo is in Guangxi province and within Guangxi there are already about 12 different climbing spots,” Hedesh said. “It’s just that nobody goes to them because they’re in the middle of nowhere.”

For this reason, some more-established climbers doubt that the sport is moving away from its traditional centers, at least for now.

“I think Yangshuo is going to continue to be the epicenter of climbing in China,” said Adam Kritzer, the owner of Climb Dali, a climbing club in central Yunnan. “There are probably a few dozen potential Limings in China, but they aren’t going to get developed any time soon.”

Yet while the familiar sport climbing hubs still dominate China’s climbing scene today, others see a transition ahead. Driven by a growing Chinese middle class that can afford to travel, rock climbing has become increasingly popular.

“Climbing has been in parts of the Chinese community for the past 15 years, and it’s really been in gyms and Yangshuo, but now people want the adventure part of it,” said Colin Flahive, a founder of Dali Bar, a natural food company in Kunming that sponsors China-based climbers. “With climbing there’s the exercise and there’s the drive to reach new levels, so going to the gym is almost as exciting as going to the crag. But when you move past that, the excitement of going to new places and exploring new spots is the second phase of climbing, and I think that’s where everything is moving at this point.”

This expansion into new areas has been helped along by a number of entrepreneurs who have seized on the sport’s growth as a business opportunity. “There are these Chinese outdoor companies that want to become larger names, and so what they do is they hire people to go develop routes,” Hedesh said. “They get an entire team of famous rock climbers, travel around for a month and put up 50 routes in an area.”