Students free to scale OA rock-climbing wall

“The climbing wall is an activity that should be open and available to every student on campus,” OCL said in a statement. “It’s an activity space that should have open access like the gym or the pool.”

Due to budget constraints within the OA program, the University was forced to charge students for wall use in the past. Last semester, climbing the wall was free for first-time climbers but cost students $8 each visit after that. Students still have to pay a small fee to compete in competitions or take intermediate or advanced climbing classes this semester, though OA offers free beginners’ clinics. Faculty members and their families, however, still must pay a fee to use the wall, and the wall is still closed to the general public.

Rick Curtis ’79, director of Outdoor Action, credits OCL — especially the department’s vice president, Janet Dickerson — with pushing the project forward in response to concerns that the wall’s existing fee-based pay structure discouraged students from using the state-of-the-art facility.

“We don’t want to have it be a financial issue,” Curtis said. “It’s a recreational activity. You don’t pay for Stephens Fitness Center.”

The wall, built by Bend, Ore.-based Entre Prises, the nation’s largest rock climbing wall manufacturer, is one of the centerpieces of OA’s year-round program and the focal point of the University’s rock-climbing community. Curtis hopes that community will grow once students learn to take advantage of the physical and social advantages that the wall offers.

“It’s a neat mixing ground with students, grad students, faculty and staff,” Curtis said. “It’s more cerebral in a way than just going and working out on a gym machine.”

Whether the AI board will continue subsidizing the program next semester and beyond depends on how many students use it this semester. So far, anecdotal evidence suggests significantly more students have visited the wall since it became free for students on Feb. 4, despite relatively little publicity.

Denali Barron ’09, a part-time climbing instructor and avid climber, said that she has observed a noticeable uptick in student interest in the wall over the last couple weeks.

“There’s definitely been an increase in attendance this semester,” Barron said.

Indeed, most students greeted with enthusiasm the news that the wall was now free for them to use.

“I’ve been meaning to go for a while,” William Buchanan ’10 said. “And now I am.”

“I didn’t know it was free,” James Lamontagne ’11 said. “But I think if I had to pay I would never go. But now that it’s free, there’s a chance I could go.”

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Some students, however, expressed disappointment at the wall’s inconvenient location in Princeton Stadium.

“I don’t care if it’s free,” Forbes College resident Jeremy Borjon ’10 said. “I’m not going to walk all of the way out there to climb a f—king wall.”

The wall is open to students without appointment on weekday afternoons between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. and on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings between 8 and 10 p.m. OA provides all of the necessary equipment, like rock climbing shoes and harnesses, and no experience is required.