Costly climbing wall unable to cling on

Financial difficulties have forced the closure of the Kiwi Adventure Trust's climbing wall in Ahuriri.

The climbing wall operates as part of the trust's wider focus on developing outdoor skills, particularly with youth.

Trust director David Tait said the wall was losing too much money to remain sustainable and would close on January 7.

"The climbing [participation] is actually growing, especially on our Tuesday and Thursday nights," he said. "But we just had to look at it and say 'this thing isn't working for us'."

The wall was established 17 years ago, and he encouraged those that wanted one last climbing fix to get in before it permanently shut: "If people want to climb they should make the most of it for the next few weeks."

While it was a loss, he said it would have a silver lining in that the trust could refocus its efforts elsewhere, particularly in its work with schools.

"One of the things is it means we're having to focus more on our other skills and abilities. We're just looking at building on our holiday programme and we've got a couple of organisations that we've been looking at doing some more at risk youth stuff [with]."

The trust is a not-for profit organisation that works in specialist outdoor education and adventure activities.

Mr Tait said it was going through a bit of a "transition", with new ideas in the pipeline.