Vera Quinlan has her fingers crossed, hoping that next weekend's Show in The Point will provide the key to unlock her dreams. The expenditure of shoe leather is not commensurate with the success she has enjoyed in trying to gather the financial clout to build Ireland's first commercially driven indoor climbing centre.
The cost of such a sporting facility is about £400,000 and that would include the lease on a premises for a first year, the climbing wall(s), equipment and insurance, the premium for the latter being £3,000 per annum. Quinlan, a 28-year-old former oil exploration surveyor, is passionate in her quest. "The reason I decided to do the show was to try and garner as much publicity as I could to try and bring this into the public forum. I want to show people what climbing is all about and that it can be great fun. I am positive that it can be a successful commercial venture. I need to convince a potential investor that this is a sure bet.
"In the United Kingdom, they enjoy 45 of these centres, one or two in the major towns and cities. We have none." There are climbing walls in Ireland, notably at the Sports Complex in UCD, but as Quinlan points out these are not commercially run and are generally not available to the public.
The vexed question of funding has already propelled Quinlan to the door of the Irish Sports Council, but she found them less than accommodating. "Basically I received a flat `no' because I was looking to make it a commercial venture. They also said that it was an elitist sport. I want to run this as a business concern." Her curriculum vitae suggest that she will not be daunted by present problems. After studying hydrography and oceanography in Liverpool, she moved into oil exploration, a lifestyle that regularly tossed her around the globe from the Gulf of Mexico to the Red Sea. During periods of leave she developed skills as a mountaineer, skier and sailor.
The Mars Show offers a lifeline, a window of opportunity whereby she must convince someone that her venture is worth undertaking. Two walls, a seven-metre and a 13-metre, were transported from England at a cost of £20,000: she could not afford such an expense but a benefactor intervened.
Over the three days of the show, the general public will be able to climb the seven-metre wall in a top-roping format. This form means that a rope is dropped down from the top through pulleys and attached to the climber. There is no slack and so no danger of falling. It should prove a popular attraction.
Quinlan has also enjoyed a significant coup in that the show will stage the first ever national lead competition in Ireland. This is an event for experienced climbers over designated routes on the 13-metre wall. They must clip themselves into points as they go along and there are no ropes.
Quinlan claims that the market is there to sustain a climbing centre in Dublin, one that would include a cafe, and lecture hall. She maintains that a target of 30,000 visitors in the first year would not be unreasonable. For a woman used to scaling the heights, her latest expedition looks like being the most formidable.
