ON A COOL, cloudless morning in November, 220 climbers congregated on Mowbray Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee, to spend the weekend scaling a cluster of turtle-shaped boulders. They humped in with foam pads and tents, but the experience is not entirely rustic. A chef cooks all the meals, DJs spin tunes from a concert stage, and there are talks on education reform, modern masculinity and other weighty topics. There was plenty of enlightenment to be found at the top of the mountain, too.
“I climbed for the first time in my life outside of monkey bars as a kid,” says Dashawn Simmons, 45, who came from New York. “I allowed myself to be guided. Like, I can’t see where my foot is gonna go, but there’s a foothold there. Go there.” Added Dachil Hausif, 48, Simmons’s travel partner: “Regardless of age, ethnicity, background, whatever—the community comes together. They share. They’re a little messy. They address the mess. They’re open. That’s the power.”
A participant at RoxFest 2024, climbs a boulder on Mowbray Mountain, Chattanooga, TN.
About 220 people congregate for the celebration of bouldering and climbing culture. organized by Memphis Rox.
This summit at the summit is called RoxFest, and it’s put on annually by Memphis Rox—perhaps the most altruistic and diverse climbing gym in the country. Located in Memphis’ South Side, an urban enclave with high levels of crime and poverty, Rox opened in 2018 with the intention of using climbing as a community connection point. Founded by Tom Shadyac, the writer-director-producer behind Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor and other blockbusters, the non-profit, pay-as-you-can membership plan is simple: share the love. The cost of a $630 a year membership provides access to the 32,000sq ft compound replete with 45-foot tall climbing walls and funds free meals and a thrift closet for anyone in the community.
Dues and donations also pay for those who can’t afford the membership, but are willing to work as volunteers. Altogether, Memphis Rox has 800 paying members—all of whom share the gym’s commitment to empowering the community by filling in resource-shortfalls and providing safe spaces to play. Many of the locals who work at Rox, some in their teens, start out either curious about climbing or nosy about the space before getting sucked into the climbing culture. At Rox, climbing is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and solving problems together.
The RoxFesters
Armani Brown, 23
Brown was drifting through life until a college field trip to Rox put him face to face with one of the gym’s free climbing walls. “I’m still not the biggest fan of heights, but I ended up doing it and making it three-quarters of the way to the top,” he says. Later, one of the instructors told him: “I’m glad you’re having fun, but you’re doing everything wrong.” So Brown started with learning how to belay and eventually got paid to teach others himself. Meanwhile, he progressed from free climbing to bouldering to ice climbing, a badge of honor to him. “As a Black American, I don’t think I’ve met another person who ice climbs,” says Brown, who’d do his share at an ice climbing festival in Michigan this year. “We don’t even know too many people who move outside of the city.”
In addition to confidence, Brown has gained a sense of independence through climbing. His job as a coach at Rox helps him support his brother Aden, who is three years younger. The sibling rivalry was on full display during Armani’s interview at base camp on Saturday afternoon, as Aden regularly interrupted to crack jokes and otherwise lighten the mood.
But in a few hours the weight of Armani’s responsibility becomes clear. As Armani was away climbing, Aden had a seizure while mingling at basecamp, crashing to the ground to the shock of the unwinding crowd. Within 15 minutes, first responders arrive in a convoy of emergency vehicles to tend to Aden—who slowly becomes more upright and responsive. Later, Armani reemerges and is talking anxiously into his phone, presumably trading information with others who share his concern. Before anyone thinks of videoing this scene for posterity, a member of the Rox family loudly threatens violence to anyone who would dare whip out their phone and chase cloud. After a tense half hour, the scene disperses and a night program of presentations and partying lurches forward—but a pall hangs thick as fog.
But the mood brightens the next morning when Aden reemerges at breakfast. According to those in the know, his spell may have been down to him forgetting to take some daily medication. It’s just one in a slew of responsibilities that fall on Armani, who had hoped to use this work trip to process the freak episode recently experienced on a food delivery run. As he tells it, he was idling at a red light when another car rear-ended him. He considers himself fortunate to have walked away from the accident with little more than a little back pain and some light burns from the airbags in the car deploying. It was more so the trauma of the accident that had taken a toll.
Over the weekend, Armani escapes his problems by coaching climbers through the ones in front of them. “I love to see the joy in their eyes when they learn a new skill,” he says. “I just like helping other people.”
Jarmond Johnson lacing up his climbing shoes.
Jarmond Johnson, 25
Johnson’s mom worked at Rox as a custodian and introduced him to the gym. Back then, Johnson was a high school halfback who believed that playing angry was the ticket to lifting his family out of poverty. But before long he found the self-examination of climbing to be healthier than the release he got from bowling over defenders on the gridiron. A climbing trip to Kenya in early 2024 brought even more clarity. “Climbing saved my life,” he says. “I was really trying to escape the streets. I never knew something that I used to escape the drama going on in front of me could lead me all the way to Africa.”
Johnson spends most of Rox Fest hanging out with friends when he isn’t helping with the event’s logistics. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, he trades his basketball sneakers for a pair of climbing shoes to scale a 10-foot boulder. Another member of the gym guides him through approach angles and foot positioning from the ground until he reaches the top. It seems like a routine ascent until Johnson reveals that this was his first time bouldering since tearing the meniscus in his right knee. “I really didn’t want to boulder again out here,” he says, “but it’s hard not to when you’re around so many rocks. The climb was good. I felt strong. It felt good to, you know, get out there again.”
Michelle Miller with Josh Jimenez, director of route setting.
Michelle Miller, 59
Miller has been a staple in South Memphis since Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, doing social work. During the pandemic she visited Rox and saw a natural community synergy and became involved. Now the executive director, she says she knows little about climbing, but a lot about community. “We’re doing great things as far as helping out these young folk, giving them exposure to places and experiences beyond south Memphis and taking them on climbing quests.”
She’s equally proud of Rox’s outreach work in South Memphis—from distributing free hot meals and smoothies to playing host to social programs that provide residents with discounted healthcare and financial aid to managing Rox’s community closet, which gives away not only clothes but household necessities and health products as well. You’d think that Rox would be a crime green-zone given the generous reputation, but sadly the gym has been a target of theft and vandalism.
“A lot of times the stuff they take they could’ve had for free,” says Miller, who places more blame on systemic inequalities than any individual desperation. “We recognize where we are. We recognize the challenges. One of the things I often say is, ‘Who are we gonna be? Are we gonna be the organization who runs away from the reality of the community that was already there, or are we going to try to continue to do good?’”
Brittney Luckett with Jon Hawk.
Brittney Luckett, 27
Luckett did not plan to fall in love with climbing. She was enrolled in a film class Shadyac taught at LeMoyne-Owens college when she figured out that he was connected to the climbing gym that was still a year away from opening. Once she started climbing, she saw her personality change. “I am deep down truly an introvert,” she says. “I suffer from depression and anxiety sometimes. But when I’m climbing, it’s like my whole head gets clear and I can think straight. Once I get to the top, it’s a relief.”
Quickly, Rox turned her from a wallflower to their poster girl. “It’s funny: when I started working, they needed someone to climb so they could take [promotional] pictures,” she says. “I was actually the first person you saw on our old website.”
Among other things, Luckett has provided a welcoming presence to neighborhood kids who might feel as if they don’t belong at Rox. “When they come in and see Black people or the pictures on the walls that we have of us, it gives the kids encouragement.” Working with kid climbers is how Luckett earned the nickname Nugget—which is how most in the Rox community know her. “One day I shaved off all my hair because I have alopecia,” she says, “and I came into the gym eating some Chick-fil-A nuggets. “I can’t remember which of the kids said ‘your head is shaped like a chicken nugget,’ but I thought it was the funniest, cutest thing you could imagine coming from a 6-year-old. They had the whole rec team calling me Chicken Nugget, which transferred over to the competition team, which transferred over to adults, employees and eventually the whole gym. Even now, when they hear my real name, they say, ‘it still sounds like Chicken Nugget.”
Jon Hawk, 42
Hawk had been applying the Rox ethos to the climbing gyms he oversaw in Virginia and Florida before moving to Memphis to manage Rox, giving members breaks on subscription fees when they couldn’t afford it and risking trouble with profit-hungry bosses. After the gym he was running in Gainesville was totaled in a sinkhole accident, he moved back in with his parents for a spell before a friend set him up with a gig launching a new climbing gym in Charlotte—work that never felt quite right. “I told him, I gotta get outta here,” Hawk recalls. “I gotta go do something meaningful.”
Clearly, the universe was listening: not long after making his altruistic ambitions plain, Hawk says his friend ran into another friend who was helping Shadyac start up Rox—and recommended Hawk to run the gym. “I visited [Memphis] two weeks later and moved two weeks after that,” Hawk says.
Hawk is a true believer who is matter of fact with donors about not knowing where their money will go or what it will do. “These things ain’t cheap to build,” Hawk says, “which is why they started building them in more affluent areas. They build them and charge a lot of money to get in them. It costs a lot of money to build and you gotta pay your people and all that stuff. But I also know how much money they’re making on top of all that stuff.
“Why build another 30,000 or 40,000 sq ft gym when they could probably do something to help people? Climbers are inherently kind folks who take care of one another and uplift each other. Ten bucks a month goes a long way.” Consider donating to Memphis Rox and boosting the work they do uplift the community they serve at memphisrox.org
Cam McKinney with his preferred mode of transport and a bouldering pad (to cushion falls).
Cam McKinney, 23
McKinney was 16 years old when Memphis Rox opened across the street from his high school. A football and basketball fan, he says “didn’t expect rock climbing to be anywhere near South Memphis.” But after walking in and meeting Shadyac, McKinney mustered the courage to ask for a job—and got one as a coach after learning how to climb and belay. “I like to say Memphis Rox is my second home,” he says, adding that climbing became his gateway into skating and snowboarding—long secret obsessions. “I had to break that [psychological] barrier, and that started with rock climbing.”
Now, McKinney laughs when he reflects on a time when he was more scared of climbing than the inherent dangers on the mean streets of Memphis. “With street danger, most of what happens is just unpredictable,” he says. “But in climbing the danger is more controlled. It’s wrestling with yourself, trying to find your weaknesses and strengths. I definitely treat it with respect.”
This story appears in the January-February 2025 issue of Men’s Health.
