I'm very excited to have found this forum. I help to run a newly opened climbing gym in upstate New York and its great to have access to this resource. Currently we only offer top-roping and bouldering but I'm looking to add lead climbing in the next year or so. I'm looking for advice on how lead and anchor bolts at other gyms are anchored or connected. I'm also looking to add crack climbing and would appreciate advice on that as well.
Thanks
Mark
Texas Rock Gym's walls are gunite (light-weight concrete) over 3/4" plywood which is framed with angle iron.
Regular climbing hangers are put on with a large fender washer between it and the concrete, using a grade-8 bolt through the concrete/plywood/angle iron, and held on with a grade-8 nut with a second normal nut to lock the first in place.
The most important part is to make sure the bolt goes through a substantial structural material (in our case, angle iron). One of the other gyms in town tried to put in some lead bolts in the regular t-nuts and ripped a big hole in the plywood.
FYI: drilling through angle-iron with a standard 18V drill is a serious PITA!
Just curious. Where in upstate N.Y. is your facility?
All of our lead anchors are connected through the 3/4" plywood, directly to angle iron, steel straps with 1/2" bolts and doubled nuts... which are connected to the primary structure (the building or the I-Beam frame).
Over-engineered a ton yes, but never a worry about anchor failure. Also note, we do frequent and regular inspections (all logged)... you can't be too safe right.
A good indoor crack? We've had success with one that I made out of wood. Basically just sculpted 2X12s. It still gets a lot of traffic (usually actual training). And even after several years of use, it still works great. I like it.
There are quite a few gyms that have cracks sculpted into the walls using bondo, gunite, or the like. I'm sure others here can comment on that as to the quality and usage.
.... and for drilling steel... angle iron, straps, or even I beams ... I love using a Mag Drill :-) ... like this ...
i like that crack system a lot! are there spacers in between? any texture or just sanded wood?
Thank you all very much for the responses, it is very motivating.
Cranky, we are located in the Adirondacks about two hours north of
Albany and half an hour south of Plattsburgh.
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