Salmon Ladder

I love a challenge. Sometimes the challenge is building something. Other times it is climbing something. Sometimes both.

Before building a bouldering wall, I built a little garage climbing frame. It has elements challenging enough for the strong and fit, and easy enough for little kiddos. And, for anyone who cares to try, a short salmon ladder.

Several climbing wall builders also wanted details for the climbing frame. Rather than emailing the same list of materials and instructions to lots of DIYers, I’m going to post it here, in hopes that many of you will enjoy it as we have.

To build the frame, these are the materials I recommend:

  • 2 8-foot 2x10s (horizontals)
  • 2 8-foot 2x4s (verticals)
  • 2 8-foot 1x4s (salmon ladder rungs and diagonal braces)
  • 7 4-foot 1.5-inch oak dowels (monkey bars and salmon ladder)
  • 1 1.25 inch spade drill bit (for monkey bars and peg holes)
  • 8 4 inch carriage bolts (connect verticals and horizontals)
  • 12 3 inch carriage bolts (anchor salmon ladder brackets to verticals)
  • 4 4-foot steel angle braces (connect verticals to the ceiling)
  • Lots of heavy 2.5-inch lag screws (connect angle braces to ceiling)
  • A handful of ~2-inch screws (diagonal braces)
I built the structure on the ground, and then (with the generous help of patient friends), anchored it securely to the ceiling.
After some cursory research, I spaced my monkey bars holes 14 inches apart. I’m glad I did. Little kids (4 and up) can easily navigate them, and bigger kids can skip rungs. My dowels are 1.25-inch pine. I recommend using 1.5-inch oak or poplar dowels. My 1.25-inch bars sag when anyone over 100 pounds hangs in the middle, and a friend snapped my 1.25-inch salmon ladder bar in two. Go for the bigger bar and tighter grain.
A paddle bit will serve you well for tapping the holes for the monkey bars and peg holes.
I chose to set 6 monkey bars because I wanted a little extra room at one end for the salmon ladder. I attached them using a nail gun, which I recommend if you have access to one.
With the monkey bars attached on both sides, the next step was the uprights. I determined the length of my uprights by the height of the ceiling and my desired clearance underneath the frame. I used two carriage bolts for each upright, on a diagonal, each about an inch from the joint corner. The holes I pre-drilled didn’t have a lot of play, and that turned out to be a great thing. I screwed the carriage bolts in before adding the washer and nut on the other side, and the joints are amazingly rigid. The rigidity actually allowed me to eliminate some of the other supports I had planned to reduce twist and sway.
From there, the salmon ladder rungs were easy to add. I measured the 4x1s to stick out 4 inches at a 35-degree angle, cut them to size, and mounted them with shorter carriage bolts. Once again, they were nice and snug. I used pine for mine, and would recommend oak. I’ve chipped several of mine with use. (The ones you see on top in the image above turned out to be useless. They were too close to the ceiling to use without crushing my knuckles into the ceiling.)
Just above them are the angle braces. These are the most crucial piece of the structure. I attached these to the uprights with 4-inch lag screws.
There were several keys to safely attaching the whole structure to the ceiling.
  1. Identify the joists in the ceiling. Use a reliable stud finder.
  2. Anchor the angle braces to those joists with lots of long lag screws (I think I used 8 at each end).
  3. Cut jigs to hold the structure up. We used two 2x4s cut to size to bear the weight of the frame while one person steadied the structure, and another predrilled the holes in the joists and then set the lag screws.

How strong is this? I’ve had a 250+ pound former college lineman hang on it. It didn’t sag or moan.

For rigidity, I added two 4×1 diagonals in opposite directions. I haven’t had any trouble with sway.

Finally, I drilled some holes on one side for a horizontal peg wall. This feature is far more difficult than the salmon ladder!

I recommend putting peg holes close together. Moving horizontally on peg wall is far more difficult than going up or down a vertical wall. Once you’ve mastered going across the board putting each peg in every hole, then you can go on to skipping holes and traversing the board back and forth.

The climbing frame has given us many wonderful memories and a lot of fun.