Toxic Conflict at Climbing Gym Divides a Mountain Town

Six climbers banned from entering. Seventeen board members stepping down in six years. Over 100 concerned citizens signing a petition demanding change. It’s all coming to a head at a small nonprofit climbing gym in Idaho—even the mayor has had to get involved.

In Driggs, Idaho (population ~2,600), the sort of independent, community-based facility that sounds so rosy in theory has become embroiled in conflict and alleged mismanagement issues. Over 100 members of the community, including the gym’s founder, demand a sea change. Meanwhile, the executive director maintains that the gym “continues to thrive” and points to another section of the community who has come to his defense.

In this parallel universe of plastic, can both realities be true? We investigate the root causes of all the drama, get the mayor’s perspective, and attempt to unpack both sides of the story.

“The infamous petition”

On April 9, 103 members of the Driggs community signed and submitted a petition calling for improvements at Teton Rock Gym (TRG).

“I was involved in creating the infamous petition,” Seth Weinert, who sent the petition to TRG’s board via email, told Climbing. His family had been patrons of TRG for three years. The grievances, which the signees state were made clear to TRG Executive Director Jacob Yufa directly many times, include:

• Low-quality, unsafe, and infrequently updated routesetting
• Lack of industry-standard grading for routes
• Limited gym hours, particularly since the two primary staff members—Yufa and his partner, Jen Piperno—are “in a relationship with each other, so when they are sick or on vacation the entire facility shuts down”
• An “unwelcoming and dismissive” front desk attitude

At the bottom of the petition, several handwritten comments reference additional gripes like “a lack of transparency with wage, work expectations …” and “depressing because of management.”

After the petition was delivered, the entire three-person board of directors stepped down because they “didn’t want to deal with the issues,” according to Weinert. Yufa selected three new board members: Patrick Hertz, Chris Mientjes, and Evan Flach. Weinert sent the new board the petition. But nothing changed.

Post-petition spiraling

A few months after submitting the petition, in August, Weinert was at a coffee shop in Driggs when he ran into Yufa and Piperno, who is also the gym’s development director. After some deliberation, he decided to just go to talk to them. It’s a small town, he reasoned, why not try to talk it out, climber to climber?

So Weinert approached them, asking how things were going. He recounted that the interaction felt awkward from the get-go. Yufa told him, for example, that asking how things were going was “a weird question.” But he pressed on, asking if Yufa and Piperno would be willing to talk with him about training opportunities for kids at TRG. They responded that they did not want to have that conversation with him.

Later that day, coincidentally, Weinert needed to go to TRG and renew his membership. He wanted to workout the following morning and take his eight-year-old son Otto there to train. When he walked in, Piperno was at the front desk. She told him she wouldn’t renew his membership. Weinert asked her why, but she wouldn’t answer. Piperno asked him to leave. Then she called the police. When Piperno recounted her interaction with Weinert to the police, she alleged he accosted them at the coffee shop, then showed up to their workplace and refused to leave. “They created this crazy narrative,” Weinert recalls.

The six banned

Two days after that coffee shop-fueled fiasco, Yufa and TRG Board President Patrick Hertz sent Weinert and two other families a membership suspension notice. TRG’s founder Brady Johnston and his wife were now banned. So was Jansen Gunderson—a former board member and long-time member—and his wife. The children of the three banned couples were not directly banned. But they couldn’t come to the gym with their parents. Ranging in age from four to 13 years old, these kids are not allowed to visit the gym without adult supervision.

The grounds for suspending these members? TRG stated that the blacklisted six had “engaged in harassment, intimidation, defamation, and inappropriate behavior at the Gym,” according to a September 23 legal memo from the Trentadue Law Office, from which the Johnston and Gunderson families opted to seek legal counsel following their suspension.

Following the suspension notice, two of the new board members resigned. Hertz stayed on, while Yufa selected two new board members who he knew through a “Climbing Gym Operators group.” In spite of multiple local applications, Hertz appointed two out-of-state board members based in California: Kristin Tara Horowitz and Kenneth Pack.

Yufa told Climbing that he couldn’t speak to individual member issues due to privacy concerns. However, he did say, “Our decisions always come down to the same things: keeping people safe, supporting the staff, and making sure TRG stays healthy for the long run.” He called member issues “extremely rare” and emphasized a desire to maintain a gym that’s “welcoming for everyone.”

National nonprofit law doesn’t necessarily preclude an organization from banning members unless its bylaws prevent it from doing so, according to Nonprofit Issues, a resource documenting nonprofit legal questions and news. TRG’s bylaws do not include any language to that effect. Idaho nonprofit law also doesn’t specify any rules regarding banning members.

However, the Johnston and Gunderson families, via Trentadue Law, have accused TRG of not only revoking their memberships under false premises, but also failing to issue refunds for the annual fees already paid for the remainder of the year. A November 17 memo from Trentadue Law to Driggs City Council on behalf of the families also outlines three violations of federal and state law.

The first is that TRG operates in violation of Idaho’s Gift Clause. According to this clause, as a nonprofit receiving below-market rent in a city building, the publicly funded “‘gift’ must be justified by the public benefit the tenant provides,” the November 17 memo reads. The argument states that the overwhelming public disapproval of the benefits TRG provides (as evidenced by the April petition) puts the gym in violation of this rule. In other words, operating out of a public space with a discount furnished on the taxpayer dollar makes this gym’s substandard service and member bans a public problem.

TRG allegedly also violated the Idaho Consumer Protection Act. The gym terminated memberships without returning pre-paid fees amounting to thousands of dollars, which the families argue should constitute a serious issue for the municipal landlord.

Lastly, the families, via Trentadue Law Office, argue that TRG has breached the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to make its facility reasonably available to Valley Adaptive Sports. Another local nonprofit, Valley Adaptive Sports wrote in a letter to the City that they have “struggled to get on the schedule” since August 2024 after several attempts. “We don’t feel like we are being treated equitably within the community,” the letter states. “Moving forward, Valley Adaptive Sports requests scheduling access.” As the landlord, the City of Driggs would also shoulder liability for this violation.

So while banning members may not be illegal, per se, withholding membership fees and failing to respond to overwhelming public feedback while enjoying below-market rent from the city are unlawful.

Off to a rocky start

This little gym that couldn’t was first established in Driggs in 2014. A grassroots gym that served as a hub of the climbing community was the passion project of founder Brady Johnston, a dedicated climber who already had a full-time job. He poured his time and effort into bringing his vision for TRG to life.

But a few years into TRG’s existence, Yufa, who at the time was an employee at the gym, accused Johnston of misusing gym-owned assets for personal use. Johnston had used some of the ropes he’d purchased for the gym outdoors and Yufa “got pissed,” according to Dustin Rasnick, a friend and climbing partner of Johnston’s. However, Johnston had personally financed a significant portion of the gym’s construction, and he had been using the gym’s ropes to bolt local outdoor climbs. In the end, the board of directors decided to deduct the cost of the bolts and ropes from the outstanding debt TRG owed to Johnston, and Johnston resigned.

Yufa, who had been involved with TRG from the beginning, assumed the position of executive director—and remains at the helm to date. Three board directors provide operational oversight for this nonprofit gym, but Johnston, among others, have raised concerns about just how much oversight that board provides.

In an October 29 letter to the editor published in Teton Valley News, Johnston called out board turnover as a red flag, with 17 board members resigning in the past six years. “This is not how a community nonprofit should function …” Johnston wrote in his letter. “I founded Teton Rock Gym to be a place where people grow stronger—not a place where they are silenced, punished, or pushed out for expecting integrity from leadership.”

The TRG bylaws specify that the nonprofit must have a minimum of three and maximum of 15 board members overseeing the organization. For over a year, TRG has had three board members or less, and according to the Johnston and Gunderson families, that’s not for lack of interest. Many local community members say they have offered to volunteer to help improve TRG—from routesetting to coaching. They have also inquired about serving on the board, only for Yufa to dismiss or ignore them.

“Competitions are stupid”

Aside from the concerns around the gym’s operations outlined in the petition and the banned members, another argument surrounding TRG simmers. This issue affects a smaller base of the gym’s members and focuses on youth competition climbing. In a flurry of behind-the-back communication, Johnston and other parents have disagreed with Yufa about what sort of coaching and opportunities should be available to climber kids in Driggs—and who should provide these services.

What it ultimately seems to boil down to is that Johnston and several other parents in the area want talented and motivated young climbers to be able to train and form a competitive team based out of TRG. Meanwhile, TRG seems to believe that youth coaching should be focused on fun.

TRG offered a competitive team, but last December, it sent a memo to parents of competitive youth notifying them that it would prioritize bouldering competitions, but no longer support travel for roped competitions because it was not sustainable “energetically or financially for the gym.” Today, while TRG does offer youth programming, it states on its website that the goal of its youth teams and programs is to “foster a healthy, lifelong relationship to sport and climbing.” TRG admits that though their programs don’t focus on competitions, “we do believe that [competitions] can be a lot of fun, provide useful lessons, and help contribute to developing well rounded climbers.” Teams at TRG show up to local competitions and to one or two USA Climbing qualifiers “per season if possible.”

As a result, Johnston, Weinert, and other families sought out coaching from a volunteer coach. But since Yufa didn’t want outside coaches focused on USA Climbing-level training inside TRG, these families must travel to the nearest gym over an hour away in Jackson Hole.

Allegedly, Yufa told one member of the Jackson training cohort, 13-year-old Elaina Pfeffer, that “competitions are stupid and you should climb for fun.” Wrote 13-year-old Elaina in a statement to the Driggs City Council on November 4: “All I hope for is to have a place to train, without the staff sabotaging us or kicking out the parents who help us most.”

“Nobody wants the rock gym to close”

Last month, the situation with TRG came to a head. TRG rents its space from the City of Driggs, and its lease expired over a year ago, at which point it automatically migrated to an at-will, month-to-month agreement. This means that the city can terminate the lease anytime.

“It’s tricky because it’s not the city’s job to micromanage businesses,” Mayor August Christensen shared with Climbing. “Some community members are like, ‘Why is the city getting involved?’ And the other half is like, ‘You should be getting more involved.’”

On November 18, the Driggs City Council debated whether to kick TRG out of its space. The Council voted on a motion to give TRG 30 days to vacate the premises on December 1 if the gym didn’t comply with all governmental laws (including by revoking its ban on specific members), provide evidence of insurance, and provide additional missing disclosures and documents to the city by November 30.

The day before the vote, Jackson Hole News reported that TRG had threatened to sue the city if they didn’t back off their demand to re-admit the members banned from the gym. With one council member absent that day, the four councilor votes ended in a tie. Mayor Christensen decided to break the tie with a “nay” vote, explaining in the meeting that she wanted to “create a win-win situation for the community.”

“Nobody wants the rock gym to close,” Mayor Christensen explained. “I want to figure it out for the betterment of our community.”

Climbers, divided

In a sport as small as climbing, the situation in Driggs begs the question: Why can’t we all just get along? 

The seemingly obvious answer is a leadership issue—an executive director resistant to community feedback and change who wants to do things his way, and board members who would rather resign or remain silent than remediate.

A former board member who has been a member of TRG since its inception—and who preferred to remain anonymous—speculated that Yufa has been “hand-picking” the board members to create hands-off oversight. “I really want to see the gym succeed,” the former board member shared with Climbing. “I would love to see new leadership at the gym—it seems like the most likely path to ending the conflict.”

Several sources reinforced that sentiment, but admitted that doing so would be far from easy. The many past and present board members of TRG have been reluctant to reprimand or replace Yufa—and he shows no signs of leaving. In a small town where you run into each other on Main Street, you don’t want to be the one who “pokes the bear,” as Weinert put it. For Yufa’s part, the gym represents his—and his partner’s—longtime livelihood. He explained that managing the gym “still feels like a privilege.”

But personality or mismanagement issues aside, the real crux of this conundrum may boil down to expectations.

“That’s the thing about climbing as a whole,” Dustin Rasnick, who has been coaching kids from Driggs in Jackson, observed. “It’s just fun. But then there’s the serious rock climbing community. There’s a demand for more—and you guys [TRG] aren’t meeting that.”

Those newer to the sport or who do it just for fun are stoked to have an affordable gym right in town. These customers can progress a little in bouldering or entertain their kids on a rainy day. But for climbers looking for a place to train or climb during the off-season, or a basecamp for competitive youth, TRG isn’t cutting it.

“There’s definitely a user group who’s never had an issue,” Weinert said. But he added that “most progressive customers” have serious feedback. “It’s coming from people who have spent decades in the climbing industry and have been to gyms across the world.”

Johnston also sees the gym’s failings in its myopic view of its role in the community. “A local gym has a responsibility to be the social hub of a community,” he explained. “Simple things like having a competitive climbing team, creating a fund for trail maintenance—all those things are so easily done through an organization.”

Yufa—who describes himself as “a gym rat at heart”—has a very different vision for the role TRG ought to serve in Driggs. Yet at some point, if this community can’t put differences aside and find a way to meet in the middle, the gym seems all but doomed to close, leaving first-timers, comp kids, and “serious climbers” alike high and dry.

For communities with their own local gyms—or aspirations to build them—the situation begs the question: What role should a small town gym serve these days? As the sport of climbing evolves and diversifies, so do the possibilities for the purpose a gym can serve. It can be a place to train, the home base for a competitive team, a workout facility, and a community hub.

But as it becomes more challenging for small gyms to thrive in the age of the mega gym, it seems more important than ever for a small gym to listen to and unite a community rather than become an illustration of the phrase “divided we fall.”

This is a developing story. We will update our coverage as new information becomes available. 

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