How a bunch of outdoor enthusiasts resurrected a beloved jiu-jitsu gym in the North Carolina High Country.
The rain had started Thursday, but that didn’t keep Boone Docks from holding their evening jiu-jitsu class. Hurricanes had passed over these mountains before to no great effect, and when Spencer Reeves locked the doors the night of September 24th, 2024, the co-owner and chief instructor at the popular Boone, NC, martial arts gym had no reason to expect this time would be any different. Hurricane Helene had made landfall on the Florida panhandle just hours before. It would reach the Appalachian Mountains the next morning. It was possible the parking lot would flood—the gym sits in a low-lying area and that happened now and then—but that was no real concern. He drove home that night to his wife and son and went to sleep not really worried. The mountains have a way of breaking up storms, after all.
We’ve been through this sort of thing before, he thought.
Spencer was—and remains—an outdoor sports enthusiast. An Eagle Scout and a Recreation Management major at Appalachian State University into downhill mountain biking, climbing, and kayaking, he didn’t begin to train in jiu-jitsu until his senior year of college. Boone is an outdoor town hemmed by the Watauga and New Rivers to the west and north, and the Blue Ridge Parkway and Linville Gorge to the east and south—an extreme sports paradise. But it’s also a town not immune to soggy gray days when the air is cold and the rain—often so fine it seems to hang in place rather than fall—is even colder. In other words, the kind of place where you might want an indoor hobby. Spencer had been playing around with friends, but not training in any formal way until 2014 when he co-founded Boone Docks with Doc Hendley, a local entrepreneur whose Wine to Water has brought sustainable water solutions to areas as far-flung as Nepal and Tanzania. For Spencer, training in jiu-jitsu complimented perfectly his other pursuits. After all, as he puts it, climbing, kayaking, jiu-jitsu, it’s “all hips and grips.” He quickly discovered that it gave him the same endorphins, too. Allowed him to enter that same flow state, to push his skill level.
Things had come a long way in the decade since then. Spencer was now a First-Degree Black Belt and the gym was thriving, the mats crowded with jiu-jitsu enthusiasts that ranged from experienced to novice. It was thriving so much that less than a year earlier Boone Docks had made a major $20,000 investment in new mats, lights, and plumbing. The gym wasn’t just on its way to success: it had arrived. When he went to bed that evening he had no reason to expect things were about to change.
No one did.
The rain started in earnest the next morning, the real rain, the hurricane rain. Though one could have been forgiven for not realizing as much, not at first. It came steady and strong, though not significantly different than any other late summer storm that might settle over the mountains before moving on. Only this time it didn’t move on. The wind picked up and the rain grew in intensity. It beat on roofs and began to gather in low-lying areas. Steep gravel roads began to be scored with run-off and, soon enough, even the rivulets cut by the rain disappeared beneath the standing water. Trees fell in slow graceful arcs, their roots losing grip as entire hillsides washed away.
In the western reaches of the county, the Watauga River, that had run just over a foot-deep days prior, crested somewhere above 25 feet—that “somewhere” indeterminate since the waters that would wash over the Highway 321 bridge would also wash away the USGS gauge. Better than 30 inches of rain had fallen over parts of western North Carolina, and as the storm exhausted itself and people began to emerge into the suddenly brilliant afternoon sun, one thing became clear: this was no ordinary storm. It was, in fact, a catastrophe.
Spencer spent the day at home with his family. They live on higher elevation and the extent of the storm wasn’t immediately clear. Still, when his family climbed into his car to head downtown to find a restaurant with power, he had the good sense to pack his chainsaw. Downed trees crossed the road and he cut his way out. They had dinner at the New River Grill—one of the few places that still had power—and after drove over to Boone Docks to check on the gym. It was dark and he shined a light through the glass of the front door. What he saw took a moment to process. The lobby furniture was upended, and a nasty ring that signified the high-water mark was a full four feet off the floor. The water had only escaped when the roll-up bay door had buckled, leaving in its recession a film of mud two inches thick. The glass display cases were smashed. The wood walls were warped. The gym was ruined. The new mats, the new lights and plumbing—all of it ruined. He cut off his light and left.
More trees had fallen in the meantime, and he had to cut his and his family’s way back to their house. When they made it home, he went to bed with a single thought in mind: that was it, Boone Docks was finished. They’d invested so much time, so much money into the gym, and now that was all gone. He went to sleep that night unable to see a way forward.
He wasn’t alone in thinking as much.
Over the coming days the scope of the disaster became evident, and as it did, people got to work. The days rang with the high whine of chainsaws and everywhere folks were learning what it meant to “mud-out” a house. Spencer waited until Monday to put anything on social media. Hey folks, he wrote. We have held off making any post about our situation because so many folks have lost so much more, and we are grieving with them. We do, however, want to communicate to our members and the community our situation…Gym members were already reaching out, ready to help, and that Monday better than 30 showed up to toss out the old mats, scrape the mud from the walls and floor, and begin peeling back the drywall.
“That,” Spencer says, “was the first leap of faith.”
People came, and for weeks they kept coming. “When I saw the outpouring, I knew the community needed this,” he says. But as they dug deeper into the building, the extent of the damage revealed itself. If Boone Docks was going to survive, it would take more than just cleaning up.
“That was the second leap of faith.”
They stripped the gym back to the studs, tore out exposed wiring, even changed the layout.
Bo Shore helped put down new mats, made runs to Lowes.
“I basically did whatever Spencer needed me to do,” he says.
Like Spencer, he had come to jiu-jitsu from mountain biking: when his riding group broke up, he went looking for that same camaraderie and found it at Boone Docks.
Israel Wilkes spent a week trapped at home by a mudslide. He had come to jiu-jitsu by way of parkour and free-running, and by the time he got out, the recovery effort was well underway. Instead of a shovel, he took up a paintbrush and got to work.
Meanwhile, Common Grounds Martial Arts allowed Boone Docks members to train in its facility, a wildly generous gift for people hungry to train. The help came from everywhere.
And not just from locals. A message from a grappler at Garami MMA in Fayetteville said it best: “We’re coming.” And they did. All over North Carolina, gyms held fundraisers and seminars. Former professional fighter Jorge Masvidal used his social media to point people to Boone Docks’s GoFundMe page. UFC fighter Alex Perez showed up unannounced to help with the clean up and then stayed to do warmups and roll with a few people. Combat sports—always a tight-knit community—became tighter still. Boone Docks held a soft opening in January. The gym was back—better than ever.
“I think we all knew we would rebuild,” says Charlie Allen.
Charlie grew up climbing, mountain biking, and backpacking, and started training at Boone Docks when he moved to Boone for college. Like so many, the outdoors were a gate that eventually led indoors. Hips and grips. Endorphins and skill. And community.
“That community,” Bo Shore says, “they are loyal, dedicated, disciplined. I’ve never witnessed a down mood.”
Not in the face of a hurricane. And certainly not in its aftermath.
All photos courtesy of Boone Docks
