This last August I when on a road trip up north to Bellingham Wa. to attend a circus camp out. Hosted by a great group of artist / circus performers @ the Lookout arts quarry. what started as a weekend skill share, turned into a good part of a month of building and learning greatness. Their land is on what was once a lonely rock quarry and now is a progressive and creative place to make dreams come true. One of the many things they have built there, that I wanted to take back with me and build in my own warehouse space in Oakland, were the cargo nets installed up among the trees. Made with dumpstered commercial fishing nets. So before I left I made sure to find out where to find these magical dumpsters and grab a small net for myself.

 This is the net I dumpstered and put up in my space. It is about 30ft above the first floor. I built my own rope latter out of scrap pieces Oak, that I got from my neighbour the cabinet maker.

The windows face West and have a great view of the Sunset.

detail of custom rope latter

Had to build a little dumbwaiter for drinks and snacks while relaxing in my net.

 In Dec. of 2014 I decided to build  my own climbing wall. 

This is how it looked the day after I attached the last sheet of plywood. 

The wall is approximately 10ft H x 14ft L with the inside and out side corner.

At the same time I started carving my own hand holds,

and building features.

I thought this one resembled a mountain, so I had fun with the paint job.

All the features are made out of 3/4in ply that I had left from the wall panels

I carved this handhold out of a scrap piece of purple heartwood.

this is an off cut of a redwood stump. I did very little to change the shape of this one.

One of my next door neighbours is a cabinet maker and often has very nice off cuts of  hardwood. That I have been using to make my handholds.

I found this off cut of hardwood to already have the look and feel I wanted. So I simply made a few cuts to the bottom edges, cleaned it up and mounted it to the wall.

here's what my wall looks like today.

Phase two of my climbing wall will be to add another 18ins to the top edge and to create a lead route on the left wall leading up to my third-story sunset viewing cargo net. Read about it in the next log.