History of the Outdoor Action Climbing Wall

Climbing at Princeton University is alive and well. For almost four decades, the OA climbing wall has been the home and the focal point for climbing at Princeton. Thousands of Princeton students, faculty, and staff have discovered the joy of climbing for the first time or expanded their skills by being a part of this special tightknit community.

In 1983 a group of dedicated undergraduates student climbers, under the guidance of OA Director Rick Curtis ’79, built the first indoor Rock Climbing Wall at Princeton in the Armory building. This makes Princeton perhaps the oldest college climbing gym in the country. The Vertical Club in Seattle which opened in 1987 claims to be the first commercial climbing gym.

The very first section of the wall built in 1983 was a classic wooden vertical structure. There were no commercially available climbing holds at the time, so we used wooden holds, machined holds out of aluminum, and glued on rocks that had been cut in half with the diamond saw at the Geology lab. A new overhanging section designed by famed Gunks climber Mike Freeman was added in 1989 and a portion of the original wall was rebuilt in 1997.

Twenty-four years later, when the Armory building was torn down to make way for the Frick Chemistry building, Princeton built a new state-of-the-art climbing wall at the Princeton Stadium. This next chapter promises to take climbing to a whole new level. The new Climbing Wall, by designed and built by Entre Prises one of the premiere climbing wall design companies in the world opened in September 2007.  The new Wall is 32 feet tall and 66 feet across and incorporating numerous climbing features including overhangs, a roof, cracks and a slab has introduced a whole new generation of Princetonians to rock climbing.