Climbing the Walls

Well, the climbing wall here at Rocklands has taken another step forward! We have come on leaps and bounds! The original wall, starting as a low traversing board, became an inverted 'T' shape last year with the help of Lanet and Staci.

But there have always been plans to extend it...

So with out further a do, we set about extending the left hand side. We found that about 40% of the kids who came to camp couldn't manage to complete the overhang on the middle board so it was decided that a vertical wall would allow a greater range of kids to complete the wall.

We start by sanding, drilling, painting and camouflaging the boards (22mm shutter board) and then knocking in T-nuts for the grips to screw into later. After that we drilled holes for the expanding bolts and bolting batons to the walls for the boards to sit on.

After this we screwed batons to the back of the boards- 3 per board- and then we were ready to get the scaffold out and get the boards on the wall!

So then came the mammoth task of hefting the 2.4x1.4m 22mm thick plywood boards up onto the wall (a total height of 8m) but with the use of a couple of speed pulleys at the top and some help from Darla and Vyan, it all went well and there were no reported fatalities....

Then we measured and shaped the top board to fit the angled roof at the top of the sports hall, liberal use of power tools especially the circular saw a must, and hoisted this into place as well.

After the top board was in place, all that was left was to measure the angles to fill the gap between the vertical left hand wall and the overhanging middle wall. This was a bit of a brain teaser- especially for two mathematically challenged males! After a bit of head scratching tho, we worked it out and it wasn't a BAD fit, a little shaving here and there saw it slot nicely into place! We then screwed batons inside the wall to lock the whole thing together and the wall was essentially finished!

Then the FINAL job was to add the climbing grips- kind of a must when building your own climbing wall! The day started badly on this one- I climbed the scaffold and proceeded to knock one of the grips off the top smashing it to a thousand pieces on the floor below, then I screwed in an anchor to the top of the wall and popped the T-nut out of the back. There's no WAY that's coming out anytime soon, will have to get the angle grinder out and have a go at the bolt....

After that though the day picked up and we got all the grips on in record time- even with some left over! And now...for Phase III....