Climbing Walls

Designed by Mazamas, the Larry Young and Paula Craig Instructional Climbing Walls are made specifically for teaching and learning outdoor climbing techniques in an indoor setting. That’s why they’re jammed with features you won’t find in a normal gym. The terrain on these walls goes from easy to strenuous and vertical to steeply overhung, but with an emphasis on scenarios for beginning to intermediate climbers. 

For crack climbing, the walls offer finger cracks, hand cracks and fist jams, not to mention a short but nasty off-width challenge (bring your tape!). Sport climbers will find a number of crimpy faces to work on, and trad climbers can practice slinging chockstones and huecos, placing gear and building anchors. For aid climbing practice, the walls offer an overhung bolt ladder. The walls are equipped with belay ledges as well as hanging belays to enable students to practice rope management and multi-pitch belay techniques, in addition to the single-pitch slingshot method. 

For those interested in working on their movement skills, the walls have numerous basic boulder problems and a set of marked routes for roped climbing.

Photo: Nicole Wasko

The Mazama "Ice" Wall is made of sturdy foam that allows the use of crampons and ice tools. There are three roped routes—lower angle, vertical, and overhung—to practice all manner of ice climbing and steep snow climbing techniques.

In addition to the foam backing, the walls also have Ice Holdz and rock climbing holds that can be used to practice dry tooling techniques.

Our instructional walls are for educational purposes. We do not serve as a climbing gym. 

• No chalk
• Crash pads are required (rock walls)
• Boulderers: spotter required; feet should not go higher than spotter's shoulders; downclimb, don't jump down.
• For every three roped climbers one qualified person must be supervising.
• For roped climbing, there must be at least three people present on the main floor (this person may be in the office)
• No lead climbing without toprope backup
• A harness is required for climbing
• A harness and belay device are required for belaying
• Sandbags are available for anchoring
• Confirm your belayer's skills prior to leaving the ground
• Perform a safety check (knot, harness, belay device) prior to climbing
• When rappelling, for every three students there must be two qualified supervisors on the belay ledge. The supervisor must inspect the rappeller's rigging prior to rappel.

Gear Placement may be practiced in the wall's cracks and features, but the gear must not be weighted in an way.

During regular business hours when the Holman Auditorium is not being used for other purposes, the Mazama Walls are available for unscheduled practice sessions.  As stated in the guidelines above, roped climbing activity must be supervised by C-Level climb leaders or graduates of the Mazama Advanced Rock program. For every three climbers, one qualified supervisor must be present. For bouldering, you must have a spotter.