Community effort builds new climbing wall at Girdwood School

By Tracey Knutson
Special to the Turnagain Times

Last year about this time, Girdwood School gym teacher Cassie Cook came to me and asked if I would like to help her get a climbing wall built in the gym at the school. She explained that she had not had much success at getting other folks interested in the project, but that she knew how great these walls are as she teaches at other schools in Anchorage that have them, and said they are a great component of physical education for kids.

Being the parent of an 8-year-old boy, I knew that climbing is innate to most kids (mine for sure!), and being a long time resident of Girdwood, I also knew that if this idea was properly presented to the community, we’d get this thing done for sure.

While we knew – generally – what a climbing wall would cost ($10 to $20 thousand, depending on how big and elaborate it is) we weren’t sure how long it would take to raise that kind of money from the community in private donations.

However, Cassie and I both became so busy with other things that we didn’t actually get started on the project until February 2011, at which time, we finally sat down to draft some fundraising letters describing the project (the Turnagain Times published this fundraising letter in early March 2011).

On the day I took a huge pile of fundraising letters to the post office, I got the first hint of how the project would go. Standing in line to buy books of stamps to mail the letters, I ran into my dear friend Stretch who asked me what the heck I was doing with all those envelopes. When I explained the project, he pulled $100 out of his pocket and gave me a great big hug to boot. Without having yet sent out one letter, I had money and encouragement.

Then the rest of the community responded.

Alyeska Resort owner John Byrne graciously dropped our first large donation, $2,000 into the bucket, followed by our local home grown philanthropists, the Persons family, owners of the Double Musky restaurant, quickly responded to that challenge with a $3,000 donation.

The Forest Fair Committee followed with $2,500 and the Turnagain Arm Health Center contributed $1,500. The project got traction so quickly – and we were thrilled.

We started to cross our fingers that maybe we could get the wall built this summer vacation so the kids could have it when they returned to school in August.

As fundraising continued, we saw Girdwood realtors lead by Sam and Loretta Daniels, challenging each other. Individual families sent checks, and the local businesses literally shook out their checkbooks.

The money piled up so that by the end of April 2011, we had over $14,000 dollars! And we knew we would ‘summit’ this project.

We ordered the wall materials and signed a contract with the builders in May 2011. While we had enough money for the project, the PTA then came to us in May and said they were really excited by the project as well and would like to find a way to contribute. They graciously re-named their annual year-end school fundraising run to “Run for the Rock Wall” and ended up contributing $2,000 of their proceeds to the project; this allowed Cassie to order some additional equipment that can be used to compliment her new climbing wall curriculum.

And then came the biggest gift of all. We had seen other climbing/traverse walls in Anchorage that had been ‘muralized’ or painted into wonderful scenes of boulder fields or mountain scenes and we wished, just wished, that we could do something that cool with the wall in Girdwood.

Consistent with the ‘meant to be’ energy this project had from the get, well-known local artist extraordinaire, Jules Wolfe, granted us our wish in a way we never could have imagined. Jules agreed to paint this 65-foot long wall and she quickly came back to us with sketches of a stunning under seascape that would honor the maritime aspects of living in Alaska and have our kids literally climbing swaying beds of kelp past seals, halibut and octopus.

Jules literally was agreeing to give up darn near her entire summer to paint this beautiful, hand-done colorful and stunning mural onto our climbing wall. The title of the mural is “Noshi,” which is an ancient Japanese word meaning “movement.”

Jules composition represents, in her words, a “symphony of color and movement.” We have the most ‘artfelt’ and drop-dead gorgeous traverse wall in the country because of Jules.

Each hand that came out to help this project humbles me and I am most humbled by Jules’ art. Thank you all so much.

Cassie told me that she started teaching P.E. at the Girdwood School in 2005 and has had a vision of having a climbing/traverse wall in the gym for the students to use since that time.

She brought us a great idea and together we made it manifest. On behalf of Cassie and myself, I and the kiddos at the school, and everyone who helped or breathed life into this project, we can’t say thank you enough times. And we can’t wait for you to get down to the school to see the beautiful, artful climbing/traverse wall this community has built.