Last month, University of Mississippi’s (Ole Miss) Campus Recreation Outdoors program hosted the Rockin’ at the Lock-In event for the climbing community on campus.
Participants climbed the 40-foot bouldering wall and the 36-foot rope wall after hours at the climbing gym inside the South Campus Recreation Center, enjoyed s’mores, and watched a climbing documentary before sleeping in tents and staying overnight inside the rec center.
“One of our student workers actually came up with the idea,” said Daniel Lawrence, the assistant director of Campus Recreation – Outdoors. “She went to a few roller skate lock-ins growing up and wanted to do one for our wall. Attendees were super excited, and everyone was up pretty late having fun. A lot of them asked about doing this again so I think this is going to be added to the normal rotation of events for our program.”
Lock-in and Climbing Wall Specifics
To kick off the event, participants were treated to after-hours climbing followed by s’mores over a campfire. Then, they were treated to the documentary, board games and headlamp night climbing at the climbing tower. Finally, they ended the night sleeping in tents in the Ole Miss Outdoors office.
Lawrence said the department’s climbing offerings first opened nearly five years ago and are hugely popular on campus. “Having a climbing wall gives students a way to interact with the outdoors program that’s not just larger events,” he said. “Before opening our wall, we had a lot of engagement with students through gear rentals and adventure trips, but they didn’t have any reason to spend time with us multiple times a week. The wall has given us a large group of regulars and grown our Outdoors program in many ways.”
Another possibility for growing the popularity of the lock-in is partnering with the Astronomy department for the next lock-in so they we could do a miniature star gazing class. Also, the department is interested in doing more of an outdoor dinner and cooking class to start the evening off.
“It’s been wonderful to see a community of outdoorsy students find a place they can call home,” said Lawrence. “They are finding ways to engage more students both with campus recreation and the outdoors program.”
Ensuring Rock Climbing Success
At Ole Miss Outdoors, Lawrence said enhancing the climbing program is one of his main passion projects. When Campus Recreation was first opening the climbing wall, Lawrence decided he didn’t want to run it like most SEC schools. Instead, we wanted to operate it like a commercial climbing gym.
“This means paid setters, no volunteer setting and incredibly frequent route resets,” said Lawrence. “One of the things we talk about in the climbing industry is the idea the product you are selling as a gym is the routes you set. So, making sure both route quantity and quality is present is the biggest factor in running a good climbing program.”
Another important tip Lawrence provided is hiring a dedicated team of setting staff and ensure they get plenty of professional development opportunities.
“We have a team of four routesetters who all work an average of five hours a week managed by our lead setter who works about 15 hours a week,” said Lawrence. “They spend a lot of time tuning and running routes and making sure we are putting new things up often. Because of this, our community has a constant flow of new routes. This has kept our community engagement very high because they have many reasons to come back.”
Final advice from Lawrence included working with local climbing gyms to allow setters to guest set with their teams. “This can be an expensive endeavor when they work as many hours as they do, however the engagement this has brought has easily paid off,” he said. “Plus, we have now had three staff graduates go on to work full time in the setting industry.”
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