Climbing “The Wall”

Since his presidential campaign in 2016, President Trump has promised to build a wall across the US-Mexico border in order to prevent illegal immigration. Multiple makeshift walls have been constructed in order to test their effectiveness, but as of recently a model has been picked to serve as the border wall. This model consists of steel beams filled with concrete ranging from 18 to 30 feet high with a panel covering the last five feet of the beams. President Trump coined the wall as, “impossible to climb.” Rick Weber, a rock climber and engineer near Red River Gorge in Kentucky, put this claim to the test and built an 18 foot replica of the wall using the walls measurements and photographs.

The replica has been climbed numerous times since its construction. An 8-year-old girl climbed named Lucy Hancock managed to climb the replica. She wore a belay, a safety apparatus consisting of a rope, harness, and a belay device to assist her in the climb. An experienced 29-year-old climber Erik Kloeker managed to climb the wall in about 30 seconds. He was able to repeat the climb once again, this time whilst juggling. Weber confessed that the replica is not exactly the same as the one at the US-Mexico border, but said if you can climb his replica, you will be able to climb the real thing.

President Trump said that 20 mountain climbers have alleged that the wall is the most difficult to climb out of all the previous models, but Weber and others have said this seems implausible. In an annual event called Rocktoberfest, held in Red River Gorge of eastern Kentucky and one of the largest gatherings of climbers in the country, a competition to climb the replica will take place on October 11th and 12th.