Copenhagen Is Opening the World's Tallest Climbing Wall and It's Designed to Feel Like a Real Mountain

Copenhagen proves you don't need mountains to create memorable mountain experiences.

CopenHill, an adventure recreation site built on top of a clear power plant in the Danish capital, is planning to open a 279-foot artificial climbing wall it claims will be the world's tallest. Complete with overhangs, the wall on its facade is designed to look and feel like a real mountain in the middle of the city.

The higher you climb, the harder it gets, and ascending to the top will require more than just skill — appropriate certifications and a minimum age of 18 are necessary to make the trip.

CopenHill already offers year-round skiing, tobogganing, running, hiking, and a collection of après-ski activities. It opened in 2019 on top of the Amager Bakke power plant, considered to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world. The plant can power an estimated 50,000 homes per year.

Copenhagen has been on a quest to minimize its energy consumption and aims to be carbon-neutral by 2025. With projects like Amager Bakke, it hopes to wean itself off of fossil fuels entirely by 2050.

A rare peak in a relatively flat country, CopenHill — with its artificial ski slope, tree-lined hiking paths and idyllic picnic spots — is designed to help the power plant better blend in with the neighborhood. The roof of its incinerator turns into a 1,400-foot ski slope every winter.

CopenHill is also set up to remind residents of the city's environmental efforts. A chimney on top of the project releases giant smoke rings each time an additional 250 kilos of carbon dioxide are pushed out into the atmosphere.