University Climbing Wall to Reopen After Student’s Fall
By Rocky Thompson on January 29th, 2013
The University of Iowa climbing wall has been shutdown since the beginning of November when one of its off-duty employees took a 30ft fall. He compressed two vertebrae and had to undergo about 18 hours of surgery. Now the university is set to reopen the climbing gym though they have yet to determine the cause of the fall. Gym accidents are rare. It’s a controlled environment. The biggest worry is that an inexperienced climber will fall on top of you or someone will swing head-first into the wall, but it’s very rare for someone to hit the deck. So what happened? Showing off in front of young ladies? A belayer playing Angry Birds on his phone? Who knows, but at least they’re reopening the wall. It’s not like these kids went to college to study.