State of the Onion: June

Just a quick update: I am actually still working on my wall. Weekends I'm trying to get out as much as possible and climb on Real Rock or at least Real Indoor Rock, but weeknights are all sawdust, all the time. I've started a real training regimen on the wall, too, which I'll detail later.

Here's the State of the Wall as of June 19th:

Not much has changed on the main section, save for the addition of some new holds. Holds density is starting to get decent, and the most frequently used ones are getting that nice chalky look. In the lower left of this picture, you can see that the corner has mostly been filled; even with no holds, this provides a nice area for smearing. The hole was awkward.

The arete is complete, and that is su-weet. Lots of interesting moves and problems can be made in this area. I still want to put up a few more holds here, especially for heel-hooks and corner pinches from the right.

The biggest change over the last month is the flat section:

It just keeps growing! I originally didn't plan for a very big vertical section, reasoning that the limited height of the wall would make it less useful. As I built, though, I came to realize a few points in favor of this sort of traversing area:

• It lets me use a lot of holds that would be nearly impossible to use on the steeper sections, at least for me
• It lets me practice more technical movement on bad holds, something I'm weak at.
• It gives the kids and beginners something to do when they lack the power to use the steeper areas, even with good holds

So I've built out, and a bit up. The highest point of the flat wall I can barely reach from the ground, so with careful setting I can make problems that take several moves to get to the top. Traverses are good, too. I'll probably build this out with one more half-length panel (each of these is roughly 450 cm in width)

I've also made the garage a more appealing place to be, with better lighting and music. And a heater, which I should't have to use until fall. You hear that, Hokkaido? I shouldn't have to use it. I should not be using a heater in June. Ahem. Anyhow, that's it for the update. Stay tuned for another Fantasy Gym coming soon, and a profile of a non-Fantasy Gym, aka a real gym, the one I go to most often. Cheers!

Fantasy Gym: Rock Hard

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Fantasy Gyms, the blog segment in which I kill downtime at work messing around with Sketchup present new and exciting ideas for theoretical gyms! Previous fantasy gyms have included The Rock Box and The Starwhal. Check them out if you haven't!

For today's project, I started with building dimensions, creating a 10 x 15 meter building with a maximum roof height of 8 meters. Despite the Fantasy Gyms tag, this gym was designed with realism in mind- this is the sort of thing that one person could reasonably build, in a building of a sort that can be found all over Hokkaido, where I live. One of these days I'll do something really wild.

In addition to keeping things to a reasonable level of feasibility, I tried to focus on a couple of other guidelines in the design:

• The gym should provide an interesting variety of climbing surfaces and situations, obviously
• The gym should include space to rest and relax while not climbing
• The gym should lend itself to local competitions, which is to say that people should comfortably be able to watch the climbers. The two gyms I spend most of my time at are quite different in this regard, something I'll write a future blog post about
• The gym should contain as many totally sweet posters as possible. I did a pretty good job here but I think there's room for improvement.

Presenting: Rock Hard!

Sited in a completely vacant grassy field (apparently), Rock Hard used to be a, uh, we'll say storehouse for chain-link fence. 

Welcome! Here you see the front desk, made from plywood. Everything is made from plywood, because I love plywood. It's what drew me to climbing in the first place! But you didn't come for the check-in desk, as beautiful as it may be- turn left and you'll see the climbing area!

Enter the climbing area. Let the scent of chalk and sweat embrace you like a warm and very athletic grandmother.

The In n' Out

On the north side of the building we have the first segment of climbing wall, the In n' Out. The In n' Out is based around the Out, a 40-degree overhang with a 45-degree slab top for mantle problems. I'm a big fan of these kinds of mantle areas, and include them in most of my designs. The right side of the Out begins as a much shallower 20 degree overhang before transitioning to the 40 degree. The left side is the In, a cave with a 10-degree back wall that transitions into a 75-degree near-horizontal roof. This section, too, includes a mantle out; the top section is a 20 degree slab, making for a difficult transition from the roof. The left side of the Out, as you can see, pushes into the cave for a steep arete. Topout height of this section is just over 3 meters, and the section is 7 and a half meters long.

Another view of the In n' Out

Moving to the left of the cave area is a short transition section of vertical wall:

This transitional segment consists of three vertical walls of around 1.25 meters in width each. The corners are wide angles- I tried to avoid just having 90-degree transitions between walls, and add more interesting transitions. The corner leads into the back wall, a wide and flat 15-degree overhang. It's 4.5 meters off the ground, which means falling from up here will be exciting.

The back wall meets with this big overhang-thing, which I don't have a clever name for. The Pain Train? The Tickler? The Big Overhang Cave Thing? Your guess is as good as mine. The bottom area is 85 degrees of full-time fun, transitioning into a 45 degree area and finally a vertical finishing area.

I kind of like the name "The Pulverizer"

The side of this feature is slightly more than vertical, transitioning into vertical. Lately I like these sorts of roof-into-flat transition areas; I think they offer a lot of interesting moves. Like the back wall, this thing is over 4 meters tall, which is certainly enough to make me wet myself.

Moving on from the... uh, the big thing... is the last segment of wall. The centerpiece here is a big projecting prow, 30 degrees steepening to 50 degrees and only a meter across at the top. The theme here is arete moves, possibly on two aretes at a time. I'd probably call it Mr. Hugs.

To the left is another 15-degree wall that cuts back into a large crevice before joining the prow. This crevice has an inner angle of less than 90 degrees, and provides a good area for stemming moves and the like. Not strictly necessary, but I liked putting it there better than transitioning straight into the prow. The left side is a flat wall, and probably the best area for beginners. A 15 degree slab finishes out the wall.

On to the non-climbing stuff! Past the slab we see the raised deck, which if you haven't noticed is something I really like putting in. Climbers love hanging out in high places, right?

This area is strictly for Chilling. Chilling is an important and underrated part of a well-balanced climbing schedule. Really garish sofas, too. Of course the deck provides a good vantage for watching competitions and climbing events, too, but the chilling is the main point.

Gosh, these girders are fascinating!

Finishing out a mantle problem on the In n' Out takes one up to the deck, as I think having room to actually top out and walk out is cool. There's a ladder available for those who are too lame to go up this way or who don't want to navigate a boulder problem while holding a six-pack of beer (losers).

Below the deck, of course, is the important stuff. Don't mix up which of these areas is which, please!

And that about covers it! Let me know if you have any feedback- would this be fun to climb on? Boring? Interesting? Unrealistic? I have no idea what I'm doing, obviously, but I like thinking up designs for climbing gyms and you can't stop me.

As a preview of our next stop, I'm going to turn this decommissioned Mr. Donuts-

-into a sweet-ass gym! Maybe! It might still smell like donuts though.

Until next time!

Stress-Testing for Fun and Relaxation

This weekend, a new milestone was reached in the construction of Kuraimu v4- an adult human being hung on the wall and didn't die. Multiple adult humans, actually! Not only that, but nobody sustained grievous bodily harm and the wall didn't break. Things are looking up!

Pictured: Me, alive

It all started when I invited my dear friends and climbing buddies over for a pleasant lunch breakfast-y burrito-things. If it doesn't taste good, I always say, just add more sriracha.

No, it doesn't include the honey.

Once I had my guests fed I sprang my trap: T-nuts, and lots of them. 

Pictured: T-nuts and Element Formula K-2

holds, aka bugs

Just like that, I had a work party going, making good progress on the 200+ T-nut installations I still have to do. Between the three of us, we finished at least fifty of the little buggers, along with a good number of beers. We eventually called it a day and turned to focusing solely on beer, but that didn't last.

Hmm...

We had a big, structurally-complete segment of climbing wall lying around. Our eyes kept returning to it. The framework that eventually hold the wall sections up hasn't been built yet, so I hadn't planned on doing much with the wall other than getting it ready... but we soon decided to have a test. If the wall itself wasn't strong enough to hold up climbers, we reasoned, wouldn't it be better to know now, when reinforcing would be easier? When you've made a decision, it becomes easy to justify.

So we hoisted the wall up against the, uh, wall. The wall of the house. We did so in a controlled and thought-out manner.

I didn't make this face for the camera.

Functional Stength

And then we had a wall, propped up in a very secure and not-at-all life-threatening manner.

Note the highly technical support 2x4 wedged

against the bottom

So now the critical moment came... would the wall hold? Or would there be a cracking noise and a visit to the hospital? This thing weighs well over 200 pounds, a thought that was at the forefront of my mind as I got into position. And...

Yes, I know I already used this picture.

Success! I was able to get all my weight onto one hold, with a minimum of flexing. The wall felt surprisingly stable. I had my (taller, heavier) friend get on after me.

"I'm scared"

I'm now going forward with a great deal of confidence, knowing that this thing is capable of staying rigid. More testing will have to take place, of course, but for now I'm thrilled with this weekend's experimenting.

Stay tuned!

Fantasy Gym: The Starwhal

Heya, folks, I'm back with another addition of Things I Wish I Had, aka Fantasy Gyms. Like last time's Rock Box, this wall is defined by a space constraint- in this case, height. The Starwhal is a simple one-wall training area, primarily useful for traversing. It is 12 meters in length and fits in a room with a three meters roof- only slightly higher than usual. This time I haven't made an actual gym with check-in and amenities- the Starwhal would be suited for a large home wall or for a sports club or training center.

As you can see, this wall isn't tall and it isn't very deep, either- the wall projects out 1.8 meters at the deepest, making it suitable for a long room that otherwise doesn't have a lot of room to spare. At no point would climbing the wall take more than two or three moves, but hey, that's what traversing is for!

I tried to pack in as much as I could in a limited space. The two major overhangs are at 15 degrees and 30 degrees, and the whole wall features a number of mini-arêtes and dihedrals.

Between the 15 and 30 degree segments is a flat bit with a tapered mini-chimney- this area could be used for all kinds of challenging reaches and backwards movements.The name "Starwhal" is, of course, taken from the big star-shaped feature in the center of the 15 degree area and the fact that naming climbing walls is pretty arbitrary. This feature can be used to change up a wide variety of holds- the bottom is nearly a roof, and the top is a mini-slab for difficult negative holds to be made usable.

This was a quick wall I put together to experiment with packing features into a small traverse wall and in making a wall that was visually appealing in a room that might serve other purposes. As you can see I tried spicing it up with colors, the colors here are more or less the theme colors of my village, but could also be great if you happen to be a Packers fan.

I think you could do a lot worse than a design like this if you found yourself with a single flat span of wall to work with when making a climbing area!

Interior Decorating for Climbers

Just a quick update to show off my new piece of furniture:

As it turns out, storing a 2.8 meters chunk of climbing wall can be, uh, challenging. This is the 40-degree segment's semi-permanent home, until the snow melts enough to get it out the window and into the garage. In the meantime I'll be installing T-Nuts and adding additional reinforcing to the back of the wall. This isn't the best place for the thing but I had to get it off of the kitchen floor, and my ceiling is too low to stand it upright.

Yes, my place is a mess. It usually is, and shifting things around to get this beast situated didn't help matters any.