By Donte Medder |Staff Writer|

Cosmic climbing is a spin off of the popular cosmic bowling.
CSUSB’s Rec Center held its first Cosmic Climbing event on May 9. The event encouraged students to use the climbing wall in the Rec Center.
“Cosmic climbing was the biggest event,” said CSUSB student Niko Rabbitts.
“We had about 35 people that came and a lot of people that came to the event are coming back,” Rabbitt continued.
CSUSB student Dominic Trujillo, director and coordinator of the event, said he was inspired by the usage of cosmic climbing in other gyms around the country.
“I saw it online. I was reading a forum about other climbing gyms and I know we’ve never done anything like it,” said Trujillo. Cosmic Climbing was planned in order to attract attention to the climbing wall.
CSUSB student Ashley Temm said, “It’s a fun event to get both new and experienced climbers to tryout the rock wall.”
Bright neon colors were brought to the already colorful climbing wall.
Neon tape and paint also adorned the wall in directional patterns for climbers to race.
Black lights were brought in to make the colors pop, so even though the Rec Center’s lights were off the building they still shined brightly.
Glow in the dark balloons were brought in to add to the brilliant scene.
The event took all of three months to plan and set up the event.
“I had the idea and then I started contacting people and researching it, then I made a proposal to my superiors,” said Trujillo.
Getting the wall decorated was also time consuming.
Adding the glow-in-the-dark tape to the wall took three days with about an hour of work being put into each day and painting the holes in the wall took two weeks.
“We had to choose where we wanted to go so we had to figure the routes out before we put them up on the wall,” said Trujillo.
CSUSB student Marissa Hobbs appreciated the new decorations to the wall for the event.
Hobbs said she believed in the weeks leading up to the event the wall saw a lot more attention.
“I noticed that throughout the week a lot of people who normally don’t climb, who aren’t regulars, have become very interested with the tape and decorations,” said Hobbs. Student Charles Brocar liked how the event put everyone on the same playing field.
“The event made it to where anyone who was a beginner would want to come back,” said Brocar.
New climbers were able to begin on less difficult paths and experienced climbers could challenge themselves and nice prizes were available upon completion.
“Even if you were a beginner or an expert the prizes for completing a route were still great,” continued Brocar.
With prizes like helmets and crash kits available, the wall may see plenty more attention from climbers trying to get the edge