ARC climbing wall intended for students
By Michael Burnham
With winter coming fast, many rock climbing enthusiasts in Logan are looking forward to the completion of the Aggie Recreation Center, or ARC.
And the more than 3,000 square-foot indoor climbing wall.
Cole Blakely, an Aggie and avid climber, is excited about the wall, particularly for its accessibility.
“I’m excited because I like how close it is to my classes,” Blakely said. “I like the idea that if I have 10 to 15 min and that’s it, then I can just run in there and knock out a route or two really fast and just get that little bit of exercise for the day. It’s convenient.”
However Blakely said he still wishes Logan had a community rock climbing gym.
“I think we need a gym,” he said. “The rock wall itself won’t be enough to satisfy the rock climbing community.”
Dan Galliher, who is the retail shop coordinator at the Outdoor Recreation Program for Utah State University, will be in charge of the ARC wall once it’s completed. He also voiced some concerns about the size of the new rock wall.
“It’s not terribly huge so there will probably be some crowding issues in the beginning,” he said. “The capacity of the space is about 40 to 50 people, so we may have to control access, depending on how many people show up. But I don’t see us doing any time limit or anything like that.”
Galliher said the wall in the ARC was never intended to satisfy the climbing community’s demands.
“This was never meant to be a community wall,” said Dan Galliher. “It’s a student-only building. You have to be paying student fees to use this wall, so the public can’t come in and use it.”
Galliher said regardless of the size, the quality of the wall will be impressive. Galliher also said the wall will be open from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. during the week for open climbing for students with ID cards, but that is not the principal purpose of the wall.
“It’s a teaching wall, mainly,” he said. “It’s gonna feed our trips. It will allow us to teach our trip leaders much more efficiently.”
Chase Ellis, the director of Campus Recreation at USU, said the wall will serve multiple purposes.
“It’s a mixture of both a gym and a training facility,” Ellis said. “It’s taking the best of both worlds and combining them.”
Ellis echoed Galliher’s comments and said that even though the wall has multiple purposes, it will be used primarily as a training ground for students.
“One great thing about the climbing wall is that it is going to be a training facility,” Ellis said. “The goal is to get them climbing outside. This is ultimately going to encourage them to go out in the canyon and to take part in the ORP climbing trip and train them so that they feel confident when they do go outside that they can climb these areas because of what they’ve learned in these facilities and with our instructors.”
In April this year the Rock Haus — Cache Valley’s sole climbing gym which begun in 2006 — closed its doors to the public. Since then, rumors have spread about the gym reopening, but there is no official word or plans set in place.
Mike Sieverts, another Aggie climber said he would like to see another gym open in Logan.
“I think that there’s a big climbing community here,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see one come again in the next few years.”
Blakely said a gym would do well in Logan if those in charge promoted it better.
“I think they have the potential to do well,” he said. “I think they need to market more and get more of the beginners in there.”
Sieverts said he’s not sure if another gym would do any better than the Rock Haus did while it was open.
“The Rock Haus was pretty reasonably priced, as far as rock gyms go,” he said.
Galliher said the facility will have two main walls, a rope wall of approximately 2,400 square feet, and a bouldering wall of around 1,000 square feet. He said the rope wall will have 13 sets of top anchors with about 3-4 routes for each set. He also said the routes will be color-coded. The bouldering wall will have roughly 40-50 bouldering problems. All the routes will be set by Galliher’s staff of eight or nine employees.
— mikeburnham3@gmail.com
@mikeburnham31