ROCK-CLIMBING DANGERS Officials step up to challenge

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Portable rock-climbing walls are sprouting up at fairs across the country, offering a quick burst of thrills and a knee-shaking challenge to those who clamber as high as 30 feet on small bumps and ledges.
The structures pose a different challenge for state regulators, who are stepping up safety efforts after a 22-year-old woman fell from a climbing wall and died in Missouri this summer. Prosecutors are pressing a felony manslaughter charge against the owner for failing to provide proper maintenance.
The death has spurred a nationwide effort by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission to improve inspections.
The walls are mobile, freestanding structures that let climbers ascend on rock-shaped holds, while held tight by ropes that protect them from falling. When the top is reached, a machine lowers the climber to the ground by slowly paying out cable.
They present very different demands than the real rock that climbers face in places like California's Yosemite National Park and West Virginia's New River Gorge. And they're mobile, unlike fixed climbing walls at gyms and climbing clubs. But they can still prove difficult. And dangerous.
"It's that challenge of looking up at a wall, a summit 30-feet high -- and you're going to climb it," said Pennsylvania inspector Pete Lamont. "If you maintain them properly and use them properly, they are very safe."
Rising concerns
Their growing prevalence, however, raises concerns.
"These climbing walls are getting more and more popular. They're everywhere. You see them at carnivals, at fairs, at amusement parks," said Jim Barber, an independent inspector who works with the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.
A few years back, you didn't see them, said Marion Holloway, director of safety standards for Oklahoma's labor department. "Now, you get yourself a pickup truck, buy a wall, take it around on weekends to parties," he said.
And that opens the door to lax safety.
Some operators don't follow maintenance instructions, said Jeff Wilson, president of Extreme Engineering LLC, a climbing-wall manufacturer in Newcastle, Calif. Some buy equipment second-hand, while still others build their own.
But the biggest problem is that some states don't inspect climbing walls, and others have only recently begun to view the walls as they do amusement park rides.
"Traditionally it's fallen through because it wasn't considered in the same class as roller coasters and Ferris wheels," Wilson said.
Lack of regulation
Wilson said he figures there are roughly 1,000 portable walls made by manufacturers like him and maybe 1,000 more that are home-built. State inspectors said they're hard to track. States often rely on operators to apply for permits, where they're required. They also check for them at fairs, baseball games and community gatherings.
Varying regulatory definitions don't allow for easy comparison of state rules. Barber said a minority do thorough inspections; roughly a dozen states don't regulate the walls, while others leave it to insurers to conduct inspections. The rules are "a mishmash," he said.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission also doesn't track the walls specifically. It said six states have no regulations for "mobile rides."
Dangerous game
In Missouri, Christine Ewing of Jefferson City was descending the tower-like structure outside the University of Missouri stadium on July 14 when a safety cable snapped and she fell more than 20 feet. She died of severe head trauma.
An assistant state fire marshal, Randy Cole, said later that his agency's budget doesn't provide adequate funding for the permit program for climbing walls, but it sent out fliers to fair ride operators.
For those who climb real cliffs and mountains, the portable walls are a conundrum. On one hand, they may introduce people to the sport. On the other, they turn it into a frivolous game.
When Nigel Gregory, a climber for 20 years, first saw one, he said: "What sort of twisted kind of thing is it?" The walls fail to teach individual safety or reliance on partners, said Gregory, who works for Outward Bound West, an education group that instructs people how to embrace and negotiate the wilderness.
But Wilson, a climber and engineer who claims to have invented the first mobile wall, said it's all about connecting to young people. He built his first wall in 1996 to introduce his then 16-year-old son to the sport.
"How do you get everybody together to go rock-climbing? It's tough," Wilson said. "It's sort of the old adage, Muhammad and the mountain."