PORTLAND — Wrapped in a harness and secured with ropes, Stephanie Clement moves up the wall at Evo Rock + Fitness with unwavering focus and strength.

She climbs carefully, eyeing each hold before reaching out a hand or foot to advance her ascent. An emergency room nurse at Maine Medical Center, Clement is mentally and physically far from her fast-paced, high-stakes professional life. The chatter of other climbers in the gym on a busy weekday evening fades into the background.

“It’s like a flow state,” Clement, 34, said after her climb. “You have to be 100% present. It takes you out of everything else and it’s a fun way to push yourself.”

Now, Clement and other avid rock climbers in southern Maine have expanded indoor climbing options after Evo was purchased this month by Salt Pump Climbing Co., which operates gyms in Scarborough and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Salt Pump’s owners said they hope to fortify and shield the gyms in a challenging economic landscape that saw two climbing facilities in New Hampshire recently close: Vertical Dreams in Nashua last month and GraniteWorks Gym in Keene this week.

For Evo and Salt Pump members, it means they can climb at any of the three clubs, which offer similar features, climbers said. Each gym has 500-700 members and programs for children through adults, including yoga classes, fitness training and summer camps.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity,” Clement said. “It opens up the climbing communities at each gym and provides different climbing options.”

For Taki Miyamoto, Salt Pump’s managing partner, buying Evo has been a full-circle experience. He started indoor climbing at Maine Rock Gym on Marginal Way in the late 1990s, when he was a student at Bates College in Lewiston. The gym was renamed Evo when it moved to Warren Avenue in 2015.

“Some of the core relationships in my life I made there,” Miyamoto said. “The social aspect of climbing gyms becomes a common denominator for most people.”

Miyamoto and his partners opened Salt Pump Scarborough, at 36 Haigis Parkway, shortly after Evo opened on Warren Avenue, he said. Salt Pump Portsmouth opened in 2024.

Several years ago, Miyamoto said, he reached out to Evo owner Scott Howard to see if he was interested in selling. They kept in touch. The sale closed this month.

“I opened Maine Rock Gym in 1994,” Howard said. “It’s been 32 years and I just wanted to shed a few things and simplify my life.”

Howard, 61, still owns Olivia’s Garden, a greenhouse in New Gloucester that supplies tomatoes and basil to local markets, and operates flyfishmaine.com, a fishing guide service.

Miyamoto sees strength in uniting the two gyms under one company.

“We’ve had plateauing growth over the last two years and we face a lot of headwinds,” said Miyamoto, 48. “We just wanted to build a moat around our business to ideally survive and thrive, whatever happens.”

Rising costs, inflation and overall economic uncertainty made 2025 a challenging year for many climbing gym operators, developers and suppliers across North America, Climbing Business Journal reported in February.

Member traffic and revenues were largely flat or down at many preexisting gyms, prompting some to scale back plans for growth and expansion, the journal found in a survey of 240 operators. There are more than 800 in the region, mostly in the U.S. and Canada.

“Boom times are over,” one operator responded. “Profitability is much harder unless you have scale and infrastructure to support institutional growth or mergers and acquisitions.”

For now, Miyamoto wants to ensure a smooth and comfortable ownership transition at Evo, delaying a name change until fall, he said.

“It’s a business that’s been operating for over 30 years,” he said. “At this point I’m just trying to learn about the people who come here, the people who work here and how they do things.”

Current Evo members will continue to be charged the rates they have been paying until they cancel, he said. New members will be charged rates that have been increased slightly to align with Salt Pump. For new members, a monthly adult auto-pay membership increased from $77 to $85.

Evo manager Trevor Bostic said he’s feeling optimistic about the new ownership.

“I’m looking forward to working with Taki and his team,” he said.