By Chidalu Nnorukah, Matthew Studier, Sasha Wilson & Tabassum Sayeka Tarannum

This story was produced by a collaborative team of students from the Community-Engaged Digital Storytelling (CEDST) Lab at Western Michigan University. It is a joint project with the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative and its equitable community development reporting project. Still images were captured by local photographer Taylor Scamehorn.

Every week, a group of Western Michigan University students packs into cars and drives downtown, eager to climb walls. The WMU Rock Climbing Club has been making that drive for about three years. 

For Audrey Nonte, the club’s president, the pull is hard to explain to someone who has never felt it. “Even though it’s a smaller gym, it’s really inclusive and supportive,” she says. “They love to house our club. It gives us another chance and another opportunity to go out and experience more rock climbing.” 

She eventually bought her own personal membership so she could come when the club was not meeting. The staff knows her face now, and she enjoys talking with them. 

Sophia Smith, the club’s executive officer, coordinates the carpool that makes those weekly trips possible. Because Climb Kalamazoo is downtown and not walkable from campus, many students who live in the dorms and do not own cars rely entirely on that ride to get to and from the climbing gyn. Smith says she is glad to organize the carpool to make sure that access to the climbing gym is not limited by circumstance.

What they are driving toward is not just a gym. Since 1997, Climb Kalamazoo has been a place where strangers become friends, where students find their footing, and where comfort is found through the long, isolating months of a Michigan winter.

Climb Kalamazoo owners, Phil and Kristin Grimm, did not set out to own a climbing gym. They just kept coming back to the same one, until one day it was for sale. Walking away was not an option. They had met there, climbing together on dates before they were married. 

Kristin Grimm became an instructor and eventually a manager. They raised their children inside the gym walls. When the opportunity came in 2008 to make it theirs, it felt less like a business decision and more like the natural continuation of something that had already become their life.

For Phil Grimm, climbing has always been about more than the walls. “When you ask people what climbing is to them, most people are gonna bring up the word community,” he says. “It’s been a really amazing opportunity for me personally to be close and learn from people who have very different backgrounds than me.” 

This understanding shapes everything about how the gym operates, from who it welcomes to how it teaches to what it asks of the people who work there. “If anyone’s nervous about climbing or intimidated,” Grimm says, “you’ll probably find it’s a lot more approachable than you might think.”

Grimm is very clear and deliberate in distinguishing Climb Kalamazoo from a gym built for seasoned climbers. “We run differently than a climbing gym in Boulder, Colorado,” he says. “We know that most people in our community probably have not climbed before, and so we’ve really geared our gym to be very beginner-friendly.” This approach has created an environment where a first-timer and a lead-certified climber can share the same wall without one intimidating the other.

Alex Bosak, the WMU Rock Climbing Club’s vice president, has seen both sides. He has climbed at larger gyms in Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, and Chicago, and knows what a corporate climbing facility feels like. Climb Kalamazoo, he says, is something different. 

“The workers here are all super helpful,” he says. “They’re very knowledgeable about climbing, and they’re generally very chill and intelligent people.” For someone new to the sport, he adds, having a facility that is not overwhelming can be the difference between staying and walking away. 

Stefans Pone, the club’s treasurer, has only been climbing for about a year. He started with a class at Western and found his way to the club not long after. 

For him, what attracted him to the gym was the people. “This is the kind of place where you can get cheered on by random people you’ve never met,” he says. “There isn’t really any other place I can think of where a random stranger is just gonna start cheering for you out of nowhere.” 

He has run into the staff outside the gym and noticed their same positivity and friendliness remains.  “Everybody here is genuinely just that nice,” Pone adds. 

Phil Grimm sees that same quality in the climbing community at large. “I think climbing brings some really outstanding people,” he says. “People who are looking to challenge themselves generally. I’m really appreciative of that.”

Katie Pozar, Western Students Association (WSA) representative, joined as a freshman and has stayed for three years. She came from the business college, where she says the social world can feel narrow, but the climbing gave her access to a richer, more diverse community. 

“The climbing club has given me the opportunity to meet many new and different people from all different backgrounds,” she says. Smith, the club’s executive officer says that she gets pushed mentally and physically at the gym, working hard and to try new things on the wall. Smith says. A few weeks ago, she and a fellow e-board member arrived without the club and 

Recently, she helped to beta test new routes alongside the gym’s staff route setters. “It was really fun,” she says. It is the kind of moment that does not happen at a gym where nobody knows your name.