CopenHill, an adventure recreation site built on top of a clear power plant in the Danish capital, has opened the world’s tallest artificial climbing wall. The wall on its facade is designed to look and feel like mountain in the middle of the city.
The climbing wall is 85 meters tall with a width of 10 meters, offering various obstacles along the way to the top. The climbing wall is designed and decorated to resemble a natural mountain wall with various overhangs and routes to the top.
The wall design was a challenge as we were striving to find the right balance between appearance and functionality. The goal was to create an appearance matching the impressive building architecture while designing wall topology that offers supreme climbing experience
Vasil Sharlanov, CEO of Walltopia
Grips are mounted, as it is the norm in climbing walls. However, that does not mean it’s an easy climb. The routes are designed and evaluated to be of a difficult category, where climbing becomes more difficult the higher you get.
Walltopia is the company that designed constructed the climbing wall. According to the specialized magazine Climbing, the wall was designed to have a modern aesthetic to match the futuristic building, while also mimicking the outdoor climbing experience with features like roofs, arêtes, cracks, and ledges. Each pitch ends on a sloped ledge, much like how outdoor multi-pitch routes often end pitches at natural stances.
A climbing wall of this height is unique in itself, especially in Denmark, and a multi-pitch certification is required to climb the wall. Only experienced and trained climbers are allowed to climb to the top. Children and youths under the age of 18 may only climb multi-pitch on the climbing wall with an experienced adult of 21 years or older – both must be certified.
According to Travel + Leisure, CopenHill offers year-round skiing, tobogganing, running, hiking, and a collection of after-ski activities. It opened in 2019 on top of the Amager Bakke power plant, considered to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world. It is estimated that the plant can power 50,000 homes per year.
