Downtown Reno’s Whitney Peak Hotel was recently named the tallest artificial climbing wall in the 2017 Guinness Book of World Records.
“It adds to the attraction (of the hotel) for tourists,” Whitney Peak Hotel’s Basecamp Manager Brian Sweeney said in a phone interview. “… It elevates our status.”
The wall opened in 2011 when the property was Commrow. It is 163 feet and 6.5 inches tall and is attached to the side of the 16-story hotel next to the iconic Reno arch. The climbing wall is part of the hotel’s Basecamp, a 7,000-square-foot indoor bouldering park.
Sweeney explained that Guinness did not previously qualify the Whitney Peak wall because it was not free standing. However, The Guinness Book of World Records reclassified the requirements and added tallest artificial climbing wall as a new category this year.
“It adds another cool element to Whitney Peak,” Eric Olson, general manager for the Whitney Peak Hotel, said about the Guinness certification.
The wall was designed and built by Entre-Prises, one of the leading climbing and bouldering manufacturers in the word. The wall is an International Federation of Sport Climbing certified 15-meter speed wall and multi-pitch climbing with two ledge-separated pitches for each 50-meter route.
“It is actually kind of difficult to make sure that the wall is built to the certain specifications,” Sweeney said. “But it means that once it is certified someone can climb on our wall and then climb on a International Federation of Sport Climbing certified wall in France and everything is going to be exactly the same.”
Basecamp is open seven days a week between 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. to the public and their hotel guests. So far in 2016, Basecamp has had more than 35,000 check-ins. In November alone, they had just over 4,000 visitors making it their highest number of visitors in a month per date.
“It is definitely a growing sport,” Olson said.
Employers can also use the bouldering park for team building exercises. Olson explained that since they finished the renovations on their meeting rooms and banquet space on the third floor, they are starting to promote having corporate groups use the meeting rooms and then use Basecamp for active team building.
“They do a lot of trust fall activities but more for climbing like blind folded climbing, some exercises that make you work as a team together to get through certain obstacles,” he said.
The Guinness certification draws attention to not only the Whitney Peak Hotel but also the evolution of downtown Reno. Whitney Peak has lead the way for other non-gaming hotels like Courtyard by Marriott Reno Downtown/Riverfront and the transformation of the Siena to a Marriott Renaissance Hotel.
“It kind of just solidifies why we went into business in 2014,” Olson said. “And now some of these bigger corporate people are following the footsteps.”
For more information about Basecamp, visit www.whitneypeakhotel.com/basecamp.
