Every Wednesday night, the ISU Mountaineering and Climbing Club makes a trip to its favorite barn.

A country barn two miles south of Ames houses one of the area’s only climbing gyms. Wall-Nut Creek climbing gym, renovated in 1994, offers climbers of every skill level a shelter to practice their sport.

Wall-Nut has 4,000 square feet of climbing surface, as well as a simulated ice wall. Because of the variety, Wall-Nut draws mountaineers from the Ames area as well as the student body.

Ames resident Ashley Burton, 25, took over ownership of Wall-Nut Creek on Sept. 1. Burton, a Des Moines Area Community College graduate and machinist with Metalworks in Ames, runs the gym on nights and weekends.

Burton said a climbing gym can’t do justice to the experience of being on an actual rock face.

“We try to set routes to replicate outdoors,” he said.

“You don’t have big colorful holds sticking out of the wall when you’re outside.”

Eric Lesch, alumnus in biology, said the warm months are the climbing season. Despite all climbing gyms can offer, scaling the real thing is where mountaineers want to be.

“It’s about one-fifth of what it’s like outside,” Lesch said.

“I’d be interested to meet someone who likes gyms better.”

Before the climbing club went to Wall-Nut Creek Wednesday, members did their annual keg drop. To simulate the weight of a climber, an old beer keg was filled with water, tied to a climbing rope and then – with Ames Police supervision – dropped from an abandoned railroad bridge.

The purpose of this was to show club members how climbing ropes react to big falls. After about 10 tries, the rope broke, sending the keg into Squaw Creek, where it was later recovered.

Because central Iowa isn’t exactly a rock climbing destination, the climbing club often takes weekend and break trips to places such as Backbone State Park in Delaware County and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

“We’re all about what you want to get out of climbing,” said club president Ryan McNair, senior in management information systems.

Another option for climbing junkies is the climbing wall at the Lied Recreation Athletic Center.

“It’s nice that it’s there,” Lesch said. “I’ve spent probably a year of my life on the rec wall.”

McNair, however, believes the wall at Wall-Nut has more to offer.

“[Wall-Nut] has more variety than Lied,” McNair said. “It has a lot more character because it’s been built by our friends.”

Wall-Nut Creek climbing gym is open from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, 6 to 10 p.m. Friday and noon to 6 p.m. Saturday. The rec climbing wall is open from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday and is closed weekends.