The good news is that it is Friday. Now here is the bad news... This is the last weekend for the Columbia cave as we know it. It will be demolished starting on Monday. But there is always a silver lining, right? This will allow Tobey and his team to start on the new cave sooner, making way for new surfaces, textures and problems. The space where the old cave is will link up to the new wall just past the steep right hand lead wall. You can see the "pass through" in one of my older posts.

This morning Tobey and his crew are taking a break from slinging steel to get some more copper coated MIG welding wire. Since they are not playing with heavy metal right now, I took a look at a much lighter metal… aluminum. Specifically, the aluminum duct work for the HVAC units. The roof mounted 1-ton units are having new duct work installed that will feed cold air into the gym. I know it is aluminum, but it looks like gold to me! While we are all subjected to this oppressive late-summer heat, it is nice to know that next summer should be a whole lot cooler for us.

Is building a climbing wall extreme? Maybe. Next time you are 30+ feet up on a climbing wall, securely tied into your harness, fingers covered in chalk, your oh-so-attentive belayer encouraging your every move, think about this... The folks that welded the superstructure of the wall together were at that height also, no harness, no fancy climbing shoes (unless you consider steel toed boots good for climbing) and no belayer. But they are effectively climbing on a ladder, you say.

The wall builders were busy over the weekend. Check out the new pictures in the Gallery .

MIG welding is an interesting process. Originally developed in the 1940s, modern metal inert gas (MIG) welding is a variation of gas metal arc welding in which a continuous and consumable wire electrode and an inert gas are fed through a hand held welding gun. MIG welding is one of the most prevalent welding technologies used today due to the speed of welding, inexpensive consumable materials and versatility of application. Originally, the inert gas of choice was argon for welding non-ferrous metals. Later development in the technology utilized less expensive semi-inert gasses such as carbon dioxide for welding steel. MIG welding is well suited to the fabrication of the steel superstructure of our walls as it is fast, produces strong, semi-ductile welds and is easy to operate. Check out the gallery to see more pictures of Tobey and the art of MIG welding.

Photos by ET instructor Luke Anderson. Thanks Luke.