Rock walls keep climbers, business busy all year round

WASILLA — Winter doesn’t stop the avid climber, indoors or out.

Two years ago, Rock-On Climbing opened in Wasilla, giving Mat-Su rock climbers an indoor venue to work out their “problems,” or routes. This past August, plywood panels and fully functional holds were installed on the outside southwest corner of the building, giving climbers a convenient place to practice their skills in the sunshine close to home.

A length of two-by-four with ladder-like footholds also runs up the shadier side of the corner climbing wall to offer ice climbers a place to test their ice axes in the summer, or right before going out on a glacier.

“It’s a quicker transition (to natural climbing) if you can keep the mechanics here on wood in a really static environment,” said co-owner Cole Lund.

Lund said wet weather is really the only thing that precludes outdoor climbing at the gym, so suiting up outside in December is no big deal with the right amount of layers (though some people still wear shorts). He said the business is looking to expand its outdoor offerings, potentially turning the open space to the west of the building into a sort of climbing park and general “hang out spot,” complete with slacklines for people to practice their balance.

“We need more places for kids to have fun and be safe,” Lund said.

Though climbing may be a “fringe sport” now, he said, Lund and his wife and business partner Amanda have witnessed a significant growth in the sport’s popularity. When the couple started a competitive team for youth age 10 to 18 at Rock-On Climbing in September of 2014, they had just a handful of athletes. Now they have close to 20 regular participants, half of whom attended their first out-of-state competition at the regional bouldering championship in Portland, Oregon on Dec. 12. (Bouldering is a style of climbing that features routes lower to the ground, and doesn’t require any harnesses or ropes.)

Lund said Rock-On took seventh out of 15 teams, and five individuals qualified for the Division 1 competition in January. Though none of those qualifiers plan to attend (primarily due to travel costs), their performances, in part, indicate that climbing is “a market that needs to be filled” in the Valley, Lund said.

Mat-Su Central high school student Nick Beckage, who took 11^th in his division at regionals, said he’s been around climbing all his life, but not competitively, and not in Alaska. He got his start outdoors with his father, Matt, in Pennsylvania. He was scared of climbing very high at first, he said, but gradually got used to scaling 30-foot walls.

Still, climbing out in the wilderness is different than on a wall in a gym.

“When it’s wide open behind you and you’re 30 feet up on a ledge, that’s scarier than 30 feet up outside,” Beckage said.

His teammate and fellow qualifier, Teeland Middle School student Henry Gayman, said the worst is when there’s too much slack in the line, and the climber falls.

But that feeling of accomplishment at the height of a problem always makes it worth it.

Isaac Davis, a student at Mat-Su Career and Technical High School, said that’s his favorite part about climbing. Though he didn’t compete in Portland this month, he said he spends about 20 hours a week — as much as Beckage and Gayman — at the gym, solving problems.

“I came with a friend this summer and just kind of got hooked,” Davis said.

Lund said that’s exactly what he and the other Rock-On coaches want to hear.

“If we can get a whole community of kids that's climbing for the next 40 years safely … we did our jobs as coaches,” he said.

Now in his 30s, Lund secretly continues to hope for something else — that he stays stronger than the kids he coaches and that “they sweat first.”

Rock-On Climbing is located at 1080 N. Wasilla Fishhook Rd. The gym is open noon to 10 p.m. every day except Tuesday and Thursday, when it is open from 3 to 10 p.m. (closed Dec. 24-25).

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.