Rec Center climbing wall reopens today

Author

Carly Heltzel
October 06, 2025

Good morning. It’s Monday, and I’m reading about the Vermont ski resorts that use goats to clear the slopes during summer. Onto the five Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

The Rec Center’s climbing walls are reopening today at noon after construction and maintenance shut the park down for the beginning of the school year. The walls will feature new routes and a freshly scrubbed facade as climbers are allowed back on. It’s open from noon to 7 p.m. on weekdays and noon to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

2.

Hundreds gathered to celebrate the sweet tang of pickle at the annual SLO Pickle Festival this weekend. What started in 2020 as a pickleball fundraiser for Meals That Connect, the county’s senior food nutrition service, soon morphed into the highly sought after pickle extravaganza we see today. One student saw the posters around Cal Poly and “was like ‘Oh okay I have to go I just have no decision but to go.’”

3.

Former Cal Poly basketball player Annika Shah broke the London Lions’ three point record in her first game playing with them professionally — she made eight three-point field goals. The 5’3” point guard signed with the Lions after graduating from Cal Poly in the spring. “Push for your dreams, because that’s exactly what I did,” Shah said.

4.

In three to five years, Chevron will finally finish cleaning up a 30-year-old oil spill restoration in SLO County, and it plans to donate 2,700 acres of the restored property to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upon completion. The Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes project is Chevron’s second-largest remediation effort in the country, and spokespeople declined to give a dollar amount that has been contributed to the efforts. The land where eight to 10 million gallons seeped into the soil is home to 28 special status species.

5.

Gov. Gavin Newsom mocked President Donald Trump in a new TikTok set to a song from Taylor Swift’s newly released album. The video shows a montage of Newsom’s interactions with Trump while playing “Actually Romantic,” in which the lyrics are about a rival being obsessed with the singer. Newsom captioned it with the lyrics “It’s actually sweet, all the time you’ve spent on me.”