New owners of Medford’s Rogue Rock Gym proud to keep ‘beloved’ space open
Published 10:41 am Wednesday, July 22, 2026
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Rogue Rock Gym features indoor climbing walls, a bouldering area and a full gym. (Ryland Bickley/Rogue Valley Times)
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Alex Golden, left, and Carsen Dowding, co-owners of Rogue Rock Gym. (Rogue Rock Gym/Facebook)
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Rogue Rock Gym, founded in 2005, is located on 3001 Samike Drive near South Pacific Highway in Medford. (Ryland Bickley/Rogue Valley Times)
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Co-owner Alex Golden poses by the bouldering structure at Rogue Rock Gym. (Ryland Bickley/Rogue Valley Times)
Local climbers Alex Golden and Carsen Dowding approached former owner Matt Lambert about buying the gym shortly after its closure was announced
Medford’s Rogue Rock Gym, originally scheduled to close for good in February, has now been reopened for over two months thanks to community support and new ownership
Located at 3001 Samike Drive near South Pacific Highway, the gym was founded in 2005 by Matt Lambert, becoming a fixture of the Southern Oregon climbing community with indoor top-roping walls, bouldering and a full gym. But in a Feb. 15 Facebook post, Lambert announced that Rogue Rock would be closing due to financial pressures
Climbers responded, not just with well wishes, but suggestions for how to keep the venue alive
Lambert told the Rogue Valley Times earlier in the year that a GoFundMe, which raised $41,175, was used to keep the gym financially afloat. And in late April, he finalized a sale to longtime climbers Alex Golden and Carsen Dowding to become the new owners
Golden said he first approached Lambert about a potential sale the day after the gym first shut down
“I approached Matt, and Matt had known Carsen and I for a long time. He knows we’re not awful people,” Golden joked, “so he was open to offering a sale, and we negotiated terms from there.”
Golden and Dowding met at Rogue Rock Gym around 2012, Golden said, in a lead belay class
“In dealing with Matt and the landlord and our silent investors and all that, the big question Carsen and I were asking is: Is it better to keep it alive, or is it better to let it die and build something new?” he said. “Like, is this particular space with these particular walls worth holding onto, or just suffering from a hard case of nostalgia?”
The now-owners chose the former. Golden said it was for two reasons: The first being that the gym was a “second home” to a number of people. “We firmly believed that those people were going to come back, show up, and make it happen,” he said. “And they did.”
Golden said the second reason could be best described by a climbing term called “falling up.”
“You’re climbing up something. You get to a very difficult move. You have two options of falling because you’re going to fall either way,” he said. “Option No. 1 is you let go of the wall, sigh real big, and drop. Option No. 2 is you go for that move. You try to make that next hold, and you may not get it, but that’s falling up — it’s giving it a try.”
During the transition, the gym was closed from mid-February until the doors reopened under new ownership on May 6, five days later than planned. Golden said part of the delay was due to a legacy point of sale system that required an update with the new LLC
“It gave us some time to really clean things up in here,” he said. “We put days of work into cleaning this place, into patching the walls, cleaning up holes. … Everyone noticed, which was really sweet.”
Another issue that delayed the opening was needing to set up a new climbing waiver, but making the changes required a password that belonged to a manager that hadn’t worked at the gym for a decade
“Telling that to the people that were counting on being here on (the planned reopening day, May 1), like, ‘Guys, we can’t let you in. I’m really sorry.’ … That felt painful,” Golden said. “I also wasn’t expecting when I reached out on Facebook saying, ‘Hey everyone, this is the problem we’re having,’ to have that very same manager reach out an hour and a half later.”
The issue was solved in a matter of days
“The gym is a truly beloved place,” Golden said. “It’s actually one of the reasons Carsen and I were willing to buy it at all, because we know that there is a solid core of really good people who love this place, who want to keep coming back here, who want to keep it open.”
Golden said the gym was able to keep all of its prior staff except one, who was moving anyways. The gym currently has an eight-person staff, along with Lambert as a consultant
Golden said he mainly works on the back end at the gym, in areas such as technology and logistics, along with his job at Cycle Sport in Medford
“Carsen is a lot more hands-on when it comes to direct, on the floor time,” Golden said, noting that she is training to coach the gym’s competitive climbing team
“One of Carsen’s and my goals is to make the Medford climbing team a feared force in the state of Oregon,” Golden said, “because they have the potential.”
Golden said he’s excited to expand the gym’s presence with local high schools and homeschoolers. The gym offers summer camps, as well as an upcoming community climbing competition that will be scheduled for late August
“Honestly, we’re doing pretty well. We’re seeing an uptick in memberships. We’re seeing profit holding steady,” Golden said, noting that the gym has more memberships this month than it did last July
“(At first) our seed money was going away faster than I wanted it to, which was kind of expected, but also still doesn’t feel good,” he said
“And then Carsen physically dragged me out of the office to work a desk shift, and that kind of changed it all for me, because, just seeing people come in and happy and grateful and excited and climbing, I was like, ‘It’s worth it. It’s definitely worth it,’” Golden said
Ryland Bickley is a 2026 Snowden intern for the Rogue Valley Times. Reach him at 458-488-2040 or ryland.bickley@rv-times.com
