Climbing Cave
I love rock climbing. I find it’s a great way to relieve stress, get a workout and have fun at the same time. Unfortunately, options for rock climbing at MIT are somewhat limited. MITOC has a small bouldering wall, but all the real gyms are very inconvenient to get to without a car.
Luckily, my dorm is under capacity this year and has empty rooms, so I started planning to build a climbing cave in an empty room using climbing wall panels salvaged from the fort I built over the summer. The build came together in the last week of the fall semester, since I had only one exam during finals period and my friends were similarly free.
I started by making a CAD model in Solidworks, using the floorplan of the room and a ceiling height measurement for reference.
Right after the fort was disassembled, we brought all the climbing panels up the stairs using a rope and pulley system, and my friend as a counterweight (unfortunately I did not get pictures of this). After this, the panels sat on the 5th floor for a semester, until the build happened over two days between final exams.
The first day, we put the rectangular frame together, which is the superstructure that the panels are mounted to on the inside.
The next day, we started by making the specially-shaped zigzag pieces that defined the profile of the panels, and adding cross bracings.
Finally, we mounted the panels to the structure.
