Climbing wall
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A climbing wall is an artificially constructed wall with grips for hands and feet, used for climbing. Some are brick or wooden constructions, but on most modern walls, the material used for the wall is a thick multiplex board with holes drilled into it at regular intervals. They generally have a place to attach a belay rope, but may also be used to practice lead climbing.
Each hole contains a specially formed t-nut to allow modular hand holds to be screwed on to the wall. The face of the climbing surface is covered with a variety of textured products including concrete and paint and/or polyurethane loaded with sand. In addition to the textured surface and hand holds, the wall may contain additional surface structures such as small indentions (incuts) and protrusions (bulges), or take the form of an overhang, underhang or crack.
Some grips are specially formed to mimic the conditions of outdoor rock, including some that are oversized and can have other grips bolted onto them.
History
As with outdoor rock climbing, the concept of an artificial climbing wall was started in the UK. The wall was built in the late 60s at Leeds University by some climbers sticking bits of rock onto a corridor wall. From these humble begginings the first commercial wall was built in Sheffield, traditionally England's centre for climbing due to its close proximity to the Peak District.
Routes and grading
Grips 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 builder 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.
See also Indoor climbinghe:טיפוס קירות pl:Sztuczna ściana wspinaczkowa