Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Tearing down the cave

I have a climbing cave in my basement (doesn't everyone?). It's half of the ping-pong room, and the room quickly converts between climbing and ping-pong by folding up the ping-pong table and unfolding the crash mats or vice-versa. It's actually the second climbing wall I've built; the first was on the outside wall of my previous house. I built the cave (with the help of a contractor who made sure it was solidly supported) after I moved, reusing some of the panels from the first wall, and adding two overhanging sections, and also covering the ceiling with panels filled with T-nuts to accept holds.

Here's a video of my friend Matt doing the first traverse of the roof:




It's been a while since I redid all the routes, so on Saturday a bunch of my climbing buddies are coming over to help do that. To prepare for that, I've taken down most of the bolt-on handholds, leaving only the footholds and screw-on features. Well, by "only", it turns out I really mean about 145 holds, or almost half of the total number I have. Here's what the cave looks like stripped down. We may still move a few of the larger screw-on features, such as the 3 long rails, or the crack in the center wall.

And here are the holds we'll be rearranging. I've got them sorted into the milk crates by type: rings & roof jugs, smaller jugs, other positive holds, slopers and "novelty" holds (like the skull, brain, animal shapes...). On the floor in front are the larger "features".

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