A new Hulu docuseries, Memphis to the Mountain, follows a group of climbers from Memphis Rox, a nonprofit climbing gym and community center in Soulsville, South Memphis, as they train to attempt Mount Kenya, the continent’s second-highest peak.
Directed and produced by Zachary Barr, the series is dedicated to Jarmond Johnson, one of the climbers profiled, who was fatally shot in South Memphis a year after filming concluded. The dedication appears in the series’ opening shot.
Memphis Rox was founded as a safe space in a neighborhood long shaped by the rise of soul music and by persistent hardship, poverty and street violence. The gym offers climbing instruction and mentorship to local residents, and in the series its co-founder Chris Dean organizes a program that will take a core crew beyond the gym’s walls and into high-country climbs. "People used to tell me, ‘Rock climbing is for white folks. That’s white folks shit!’ And I was like, ‘This is your shit. This is here for you,’" Dean says in the series. "The culture of rock climbing fits Black culture. The love, the care, the motivation, the conversation – it’s perfect for a Black community."
The group the series centers on includes Mike Lee, Quinton Onidas, Brittany Luckett, DJ Johnson, Isaiah Henderson, Pei Lin, Jojo Brown and Jarmond Johnson. Several members describe lives that included family absence, homelessness and involvement in street-level crime before finding community at the gym. "I was like, mind blown," Lee says of his first impressions of Memphis Rox. "It’s healthy for your mind, healthy for your soul," Jarmond Johnson says, turning to climbing as a different outlet from prior gang involvement.
To prepare for Mount Kenya, which rises to more than 17,000 feet, the crew first travels to Colorado for an immersive outdoor experience with veteran climber and educator Phil Henderson, then to Las Vegas to climb with Alex Honnold, the big-wall climber featured in the Oscar-winning Free Solo. The Colorado segment highlights the practical difficulties of altitude and endurance even before the participants reach the technical and hypoxic conditions of Mount Kenya. In one interview, a mountain guide in Africa, Peter Naituli, describes Mount Kenya as "the true challenge for mountaineers," warning that altitude in particular presents a different kind of toughness than the group has faced at the gym.
The series interweaves training sequences at the Memphis gym with travel footage and personal interviews, exploring how climbing functions as both physical challenge and communal practice. Filmmakers place an understated, organ-driven soul soundtrack under much of the footage, a choice reviewers say underscores the link between the neighborhood’s musical heritage and the series’ quiet urgency. The show also features interviews with Tom Shadyac, the filmmaker and Memphis Rox benefactor, who helped provide initial funding for the gym.
Memphis to the Mountain draws frequent contrasts between the gym’s role as a neighborhood refuge and the risks that remain outside its doors. An on-screen note about Johnson’s death frames the stakes: gun violence reached through the front doors of the very community space the docuseries celebrates. "In Memphis," Lee says in one closing exchange, "It’s not mountains and hills here. It’s a lot of gun violence – there’s murders everywhere. You never know when something’s gonna happen."
Critics and viewers have noted the series’ emphasis on personal honesty and group dynamics. Participants candidly describe past substance use and criminal involvement, and the series privileges their own assessments of transformation and purpose. Quinton Onidas, in one memorable line, sums his focus this way: "I’m just trying to be great, that’s all." The series does not stage a guaranteed triumphant summit; instead, it presents training and travel as meaningful acts of aspiration and mutual support, leaving the rigors of high-altitude climbing and the outcome on Mount Kenya as elements of real risk.
Memphis to the Mountain also situates itself among other recent climbing films and series that explore the emotional and physical extremes of the sport, while making a distinct case for climbing as a community-building practice within an urban Black neighborhood. The series runs through moments of physical awe — difficult moves on gym walls, exposed ridgelines and the imposing face of Mount Kenya — as well as quieter scenes of mentorship, music and conversation.
The four-part series is available to stream on Hulu. It presents the Memphis Rox crew’s journey as both a literal ascent and a metaphor for seeking footholds in difficult circumstances, documenting how a neighborhood gym has offered training, companionship and an alternative to the violence that shaped many of its members’ earlier lives.