Like Sprinkles on a Doughnut: Spraywalls, Climbing, and Community

Reflections of a route setter

Emery Carlson

Almost every Sunday of my college career has been spent in the basement of the Rec (aka the climbing wall) setting new routes for the week. From the wonderful people whom I’ve had the pleasure of setting with, to the joy of seeing patrons puzzling through my creations, I cannot imagine a more fulfilling way to participate in a community that has meant so much to me for the eight years that I’ve been climbing.

This semester I was afforded the opportunity to be part of a team—the one in charge of setting the spraywall for our very own U of M climbing training facility (located by the racquetball courts in the Rec and officially open by the time you’re reading this!). If you’re unfamiliar, a spraywall is like a climbing wall in that it’s a wall with climbing holds on it. However, unlike other climbing walls, there are no pre-set routes, and the hold-density is much higher than usual, allowing climbers to, well, “make their own problems.” Setting the spraywall has been unlike any of my normal work as a setter: usually when I put holds on the wall (the basic operation of setting), these go on to build a single route with a lifespan of roughly a month. However, as I was setting the spraywall last weekend, I was cognizant of the fact that each hold I was placing could play a role in not only one, but countless routes created by people whom I will (probably) never meet. It was simultaneously heartwarming and rather daunting.

I see a spraywall as an embodiment of the reciprocity of community: it is only as valuable as the collection of routes that generations of climbers find within it. I take great joy in the prospect that future climbers will use the holds I placed in ways I could never have imagined.