Oregon Public Broadcasting

A Central Oregon company is working on a climbing wall that company officials say will be the tallest of its type in the world, once it’s completed. It will be installed in Reno, Nevada. Reporter David Nogueras dropped in to the Bend facility where it’s being built to see how construction is shaping up.

Workers are readying main manufacturing floor at Entre Prises for the massive project now underway. Hundreds of bags of sand sit wrapped on 12 wooden pallets. They'll go into making 130 composite panels for the final structure.

A climber on a wall made by Entre Prises USA

In an adjoining room, a worker uses a belt sander to polish unfinished handholds that will be bolted on to the panels. Those are what climbers hold to pull themselves up the wall. The wall in Reno will have about 3,500 of these.

In the company's main office, Adam Koberna unfurls the schematics for the design. He's Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Entre Prises. He says the wall will have features to appeal to beginning and advanced climbers, but its unique appeal is its height.

Adam Koberna: "This is 163 feet tall, the climbing wall.But it starts 40 feet off the ground, so you’re basically getting 200 feet of exposure."

That's equivalent to a 20-story building.

Entre Prises was one of the first companies to manufacture climbing walls in the 1990s. The company headquarters is in Bend. It also has offices in the France, the United Kingdom and Germany. It just opened facilities in China. 

Entre Prises is one of a handful of companies that have helped to broaden the sport's appeal.

Koberna like most of the 40 employees who work here, is a climber himself. But he says when he started 20 years ago there were no climbing walls. So getting himself to a rock often took more effort than getting himself up the side of one.

Adam Koberna: "I mean, yeah being from Ohio, it's like where did you climb in Ohio? Well, not Ohio. You know, it was West Virginia. It was Pennsylvania. You traveled. That's what people do."

But 20 years after the introduction of the climbing wall, people still travel, especially to world-class attractions like Smith Rock just North of Redmond.

David Nogueras / OPB

Despite the growing popularity of climbing walls, many still like to "interface with the rock."

Daniel Van Donge made the trip to Smith Rock with his friends all the way from from Bellingham, Washington.

Daniel Van Donge: "Bellingham is about seven hours, nine hours in my Volkswagen. Worth the trip?  Yeah, Definitely worth the trip."

Van Donge is 21 and part a new breed of climbers who've grown up in the age of the climbing wall. For him, climbing in a gym is a supplement rather than a replacement for getting outside.

Daniel Van Donge: "Because in the areas where you don't have awesome rock like this or it's raining all the time, I mean... where I'm from in Bellingham, climbing outdoors is really hard in the winter because it's so wet. I'm really thankful we have an indoor wall."

Duane Raleigh is the publisher of 'Rock and Ice', a climbing magazine out of Carbondale Colorado. He says the advent of climbing walls 20 years ago marked a turning point in the sport's progression. He estimates before climbing walls there were a 25,000 climbers worldwide. Today, he says that number is closer to two million.

Duane Raleigh: "Because gyms made climbing more accessible, you can live in a city and be two hours from climbing but if there's a gym you're just minutes from it."

Raleigh says climbing walls have also broadened the appeal of the sport. He says, 20 years ago climbing was dominated by men. He describes most climbers as your typical outdoorsy type: bearded and extreme. But he says the ability to climb safely in a gym has turned that stereotype on its head.

Duane Raleigh: "Today, with gyms you have grade-school kids learning to climb which 20, 30 years ago would have been unthinkable and it's really leveled out the gender bias as well."

And while some climbers might never venture out of the gym, Adam Koberna, VP at Entre Prises says even the best climbing wall can't fully replace for the real thing. 

Adam Koberna: "I mean, all of us, for how much we love climbing indoors and we do it all the time, we all love to go outside and go rock climbing. There's no, we only climb indoors and we can't climb... how would we know what to design if we didn't go outside and interface with the rock? That's where it all comes from."

Engineers and designers at Entre Prises are looking forward to bringing the climbing wall to Reno. It's scheduled to be completed later this year.

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Entre Prises Climbing Walls