A student — who refused to be named, so we will call him Peter '05 — knows there are no shortcuts to the top.
Last week he climbed the new ellipse dormitory. The week before, it was five-story Guyot Hall. And his ambitions go higher still.
Peter, along with his friends — whom we'll call Patrick '05 and Frank '05 — is part of a growing college trend called "buildering." Buildering — a corruption of the rock-climbing term "bouldering" — has emerged on campuses from New Haven to Seattle.
Buildering got its start in the 1970s, when lone daredevils began climbing tall statues and buildings as stunts. Initially viewed as the province of a few scattered thrill-seekers, the sport attracted national attention through the feats of urban climbers such as "Spider Dan" Goodwin, who scaled the Sears Tower in 1981.
While the buzz from Goodwin's stunts eventually faded, some of the young people inspired by the notion of climbing architectural structures began practicing it in a modified form on their college campuses.
Now — partly because modifications to the sport are attracting a wider membership and partly because Internet websites are allowing scattered climbing communities to connect for the first time — buildering seems to be gradually emerging from the underground.
The University's Environmental Health and Safety website states, "It is the policy of Princeton University that the use of University structures for 'climbing' is prohibited." EHS specifically names "buildings, trees, statues and flag poles" among these structures, and warns that violations will be reported to the dean of udergraduate students.
Though the United Kingdom remains the principal home of the online buildering community, groups from North American colleges such as the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia and Yale University have begun to post online "climbing guides" to campus buildings and to press for official sanction of their sport.
All of this was unknown to Peter and his friends when they first hit upon the idea of climbing buildings during April of their sophomore year. To hear him tell the tale, the three of them were sitting around his dorm room when inspiration struck.
"Hey Frank," Peter had said, "You wanna go climb some s—t?"
Half an hour later, the boys were scrambling up the front of Pyne Hall.
"We were just kind of testing the limits, I guess," Frank said.
The climb was exhilarating. The building's facade is of cement-and-stone moldings, a surface not found on natural cliffs. Its layout presented problems they hadn't encountered on the Outdoor Action climbing wall. And the danger of being caught added a thrill to the whole venture.
They were hooked.
The boys made a game of trying to reach the roofs of different buildings with the aid of windows and fire escapes. Soon, though, this ceased to be a challenge. The climbers made a new rule limiting themselves to the use of bald facades and the occasional gargoyle.
"It wasn't really buildering," Peter said disdainfully of their initial excursions. Now they climb buildings several times a month, and consider themselves connoisseurs of the art's finer points.
"I think [buildering] is a certain mentality," Peter said. "If you're a photographer, you look at things in a certain way. The same thing is true if you're a painter. And if you're a climber, you look at things and look for ways to climb them."
Outdoor Action director Rick Curtis disagrees with their actions. "Outdoor Action in no way supports the climbing of buildings," he said.
"People need to understand that we already have places like the Outdoor Action climbing wall on campus," he said. "There is a tendency [among climbers] to believe that anything that's out there can be climbed, but that's not the case."
Curtis said a student injury or death in a buildering accident could place the University at legal risk. Though he encourages the use of legitimate resources like the climbing wall, he cautioned students to "respect other people's ownership and rules and regulations."
Despite the explicit prohibitions on buildering, Peter and his friends are rarely disturbed by onlookers. Only once has a public safety officer caught one of them climbing — and even then it was just Frank climbing out of a second-floor window because it was "more fun than walking down the stairs."
Even students walking by the buildings rarely give the human wallflies more than passing glances.
"At Princeton, nobody really stops and looks at anyone doing anything," Peter explained. "You could be dancing around like a monkey and no one would look."
In moments of fancy, Peter has daydreamed about mounting Patton, scaling Little and even rappelling down Fine. But his "fantasy climb" is Nassau Hall.
"The University has taken away so many traditions, and bringing back the clapper tradition would be great," he said.
The administrations of a few other universities have embraced organized buildering. Yale Climbing, formerly the Yale Mountaineering Club, occasionally sets up a top-rope belay on the school's Jonathan Edwards Library and supervises club scaling of the structure. More rarely it runs a "Durfee Climb," in which it sets up harnesses and belay stations outside Yale's Durfee Hall and lets anyone climb for a small fee.
Although Yale Climbing's website admits "there is a lot of preparation and dealing with administration to do before we do a Durfee Climb," the privilege sounds like pure liberty to Frank.
"We're part of [the larger buildering] community, but not officially sanctioned," Frank said. "Hopefully, the [University's] administration will eventually let Outdoor Action hold supervised [campus] climbs."
Curtis said he does not believe the University will ever allow such a program.
"Outdoor Action has provided a lot of effort so people would have a place to climb on campus," he said. "If someone falls [from a building], it's the University that will ultimately bear the financial responsibility."
Regardless of whether the seniors succeed in legitimizing a Nassau Climb during their stay at Princeton, they say they will stay in touch after graduation. They have bigger mountains to climb together.
"If we have enough money, we'll climb everything," Peter said. "Anapurna, K-2 . . ."
"We'll go to Colorado," Patrick said. "We'll climb Mt. Princeton."
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