Climbing wall

An indoor climbing wall in the UK showing moulded features and coloured route
markers.
A climbing wall is an artificially constructed wall with grips for hands and feet,
usually used for indoor climbing, but sometimes located outdoors. 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 practise lead climbing or
bouldering.
Each hole contains a specially formed t-nut to allow modular climbing holds to
be screwed onto 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 (incuts) and protrusions (bulges), or take the form of an overhang,
underhang 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.
Contents
1 History
2 Wall types
3 Routes and grading
4 Gallery
5 See also
6 External links
History
The concept of the artificial climbing wall began in the UK. The first wall was
created in 1964 by Don Robinson, a lecturer in Physical Education by inserting
pieces of rock into a corridor wall.
[citation needed]
The first commercial wall was built
in Sheffield, traditionally England's centre for climbing due to its proximity to the
Peak District.
[citation needed]
The first indoor climbing gym in the U.S. was established
by the Vertical World in Seattle, WA in 1987.
[citation needed]

Wall types

An inflatable climbing tower
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.
Some other types of walls include slabs of granite, concrete sprayed onto a wire
mesh, pre-made fiberglass panels, large trees, manufactured steel and aluminum
panels, textured fiberglass walls and inflatables.
Routes and grading
Holds come in different colours, those of the same colour often being used to
denote a route, allowing routes of different difficulty levels to be overlaid on one
another. Coloured tape placed under climbing holds is another way that is often
used to mark different climbing routes. In attempting a given route, a climber is
only allowed to use grips of the designated colour as handholds but is usually
allowed to use both handholds and footholds of the designated colour and
surface structures and textures of the "rockface" as footholds.
The grade (difficulty) of the route is usually a consensus decision between the
setter of the route and the first few people who climb the route.
Many indoor climbing walls have people who are assigned to set these different
climbing routes. These people are called route setters or course setters.
As indoor climbing walls are often used to check the development of climber's
ability, climbs are color-coded.