Down a couple of flights of stairs and a long hallway, around a corner, past the concession stand and the pool, is the Grinnell College climbing wall. During open hours, student employees for the Grinnell Outdoor Recreation Program (GORP) belay, supervise and chat with the regulars who have made the climbing wall a place of friendship and community –– as well as a playground.
In the past year, the wall has undergone changes under the leadership of Amanda Preperato, director of GORP, who joined the College faculty in the fall of 2023 from the University of Maryland. Upon her arrival to the position, Preperato paused GORP’s offsite nature trips to focus on standards and best practices on campus, particularly in the equipment room in the Harris Center and at the climbing wall – as well as develop a new training curriculum with those very nature trips in mind, in the form of PHE-195 ST: Adventure Leadership.
“She kind of gave the whole place a revamp,” said Bannon Jones `25, a GORP student employee. Changes at the wall included new harnesses and updated belay systems, clear policies and procedures, rubrics for belay assessments and thorough documentation practices, which have revealed an uptick in attendance that has been noticeable to the students who work open hour shifts.
Graham Ward `25, a GORP student employee, can attest to the rise in attendance. He got into climbing himself when he quit the tennis team and was looking for something to supplement it. “I started coming to the wall, and I got hooked on climbing,” he said. Ward said there was a stretch of time when he was at the climbing wall for the full two-hour open period, four or five days a week. Back then, he said, there were maybe three or four people climbing a session, but when Ward fills out their end of shift reports these days, there are regularly ten or more patrons to document.
“There’s been some new blood on the freshman side, but also some fourth-year revivals, people who over their Grinnell careers have stopped playing team sports have kind of found a new community at the climbing wall,” said Jones. The climbing wall also enjoys visits from families during halftime at weekend swim meets and basketball games — Ward, who works Saturday shifts, said that kids are always excited to see the wall — as well as students looking for a low-pressure way to get moving and hang out with their friends.
“What I love is that it’s often a space for people who maybe don’t feel comfortable in a traditional gym setting, and that was me in college, and I hear that when I interview people to work at the wall,” said Preperato. She said the next projects at the wall are to develop a routine for route setting and expand climbing clinics — now, belay clinics are offered, but Preperato wants to expand to clinics on movement and technique.
Preperato said one of her main priorities is to “make sure people feel that they don’t have to have any previous experience, and they feel welcome, and there’s a place for them there to be physically active but also build relationships — I think that happens a lot at the wall, and it’s a magical space for that.”
