After about a two weeks of work, spread over a couple months, we finally have a new climbing wall down in the basement of the Zuni house in Los Alamos. This is the third wall to be built down there and definitely the best. The floor space is only about 12'x12' so it's pretty cozy with a low 8' ceiling height but all the walls flow together pretty well without too many sharp corners. It seems to climb pretty well. The semi gloss white paint makes the space reflect the light and a totally self supporting framing provides easy access to the back and lots of storage all the way around the wall for fixing t-nuts.
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| The original Laeser Institute wall in 1991 |
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| V2.0 was quite a bit better in 1996 |
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| Mel on V2.0 in 1996 |
Here's a video of the old wall in Chattanooga:
Here's some photos of the construction process that we started in September. Special thanks to Masumi for donating all of the plywood with t-nuts already in place. That helped keep the cost down to less than $200.
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| Layton helps with the initial framing |
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| Building the wall in our shop was awesome because there's lots of space and tools |
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| Almost there |
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| Kestrel getting ready to paint |
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| Layton getting ready to put the first holds on. |
A couple features I'm proud of are "midnight lightning" bolts Layton and I stenciled with gold spray paint along the bottom and the 2" gap at the bottom of the plywood to provide access for grabbing stray t-nuts should they get bumped out.
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| Layton demos the finished product. One of our best walls ever! |
Here's a clip of Layton trying to traverse around the wall:
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