Wall Climbing, Rock Walls, and Gear

Welcome to Great Wall Climbing.com. Our site is dedicated to gathering and disseminating information on Wall Climbing, Wall Climbing Safety, as well as Wall Climbing Gear and Equipment. Great Wall Climbing.com is a purely informational and does not promote or endorse any particular method or product.

Wall Climbing is an intense sport, which seems to be gaining popularity and people every day. Anybody can climb, and because it is indoors, Wall Climbing is an activity that can be done throughout the whole year.

Wall Climbers must have very good strength in their hands, forearms, shoulders and back. Without this strength it will be very hard to pull the weight of your body higher and higher. Special equipment and shoes are needed for balance and grip. Just like you wouldnt skate with out proper skate shoes.

Wall Climbers need a wall to climb to begin with. A climbing wall is an artificially constructed wall with grips for hands and feet, used for climbing.

Some are brick or wooden constructions, but on most modern walls, the material most often used is a thick multiplex board with holes drilled into it. Recently, manufactured steel and aluminum have also been used. The wall may have places to attach belay ropes, but may also be used to practice lead climbing or bouldering.

Each hole contains a specially formed t-nut to allow modular climbing holds to be screwed on to the wall. With manufactured steel or aluminum walls, an engineered industrial fastener is used to secure climbing holds. The face of the multiplex board climbing surface is covered with textured products including concrete and paint or polyurethane loaded with sand.

In addition to the textured surface and hand holds, the wall may contain surface structures such as indentions (in cuts) and protrusions (bulges), or take the form of an overhang, under hang or crack.
Some grips are formed to mimic the conditions of outdoor rock, including some that are oversized and can have other grips bolted onto them.

The concept of the artifici al climbing wall began in the UK. The first wall was created in 1964 at Leeds University by Don Robinson, a lecturer in Physical Education and founder of DR Climbing Walls, by inserting pieces of rock into a corridor wall. The first commercial wall was built in Sheffield, traditionally England's centre for climbing due to its proximity to the Peak District.

Gym climbing is becoming an increasingly popular urban sport and provides many people with the opportunity to try some aspects of the sport of rock climbing. Bouldering gyms focus on bouldering rather than roped climbing.

The simplest type of wall is of plywood construction, known colloquially in the climbing community as a 'woody', with a combination of either bolt-on holds or screw on holds. Bolt-on holds are fixed to a wall with iron bolts which are inserted through the hold, which will have specific bolt points, and then fixed into pre-allocated screw-threaded holes in the wall.

Screw-on holds are, by contrast, usually much smaller, owing to the nature of their fixing. These holds are connected to the wall by screws which may be fastened anywhere on the wall's surface.

Other types of walls include slabs of granite, concrete sprayed on to a wire mesh, pre-made fiberglass panels, manufactured steel and aluminum panels, and textured fiberglass walls.

 

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