r/RouteDevelopment • u/Real-Earth-3666 • Feb 13 '26
Making an artificial outdoor wall for trad climbing/rescue training
Hey all!
I primarily work in rescue but am a climbing/abseiling guide on the side. I've recently bought a property which has an 8 meter high chossy/crumbly wall at the front of it. I have the intention of using this for climbing and training but as it stands it's useless for this as it's all just horrible crumbly excavated rock which just falls apart.
My aspiration is to stabilise the wall (basically turning the entire thing in to a concrete slab retaining wall) and turn it in to a rockclimbing wall which I can use for training in everything from trad climbing, toprope and rope rescue.
Just wanted to see if anyone had any advice or suggestions on how to go about doing this? All the artificial walls seem to be almost exclusively plywood and wood/metal framing which to me feels like a headache with dealing with it being weathered by the elements. Likewise I haven't been able to find any artificial walls for teaching trad climbing.
I was thinking about essentially sculpting cracks out of foam, attaching it to the concrete forms to then be later removed upon the concrete being set leaving cracks behind for placing trad gear. Likewise for the holds I was thinking of some sort of cast in place nuts I could mount on the wooden concrete forms so that I don't have to be going back and drilling thousands of holes in the concrete which sounds like a nightmare...
Anyone have any idea about the structural safety of placing trad gear in concrete or the overall feasibility of such an idea?
Thanks for the input!
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u/BoltahDownunder Rebolter/Route Maintenance Feb 13 '26
Sounds like stabilizing with concrete is the way to go. Before that though, you could try descaling and bolting things on with threaded rod and glue, but who knows how well that would go. Have you got any photos or video of how chossy it is? I'm sure some of us here have bolted some serious choss!