I’ve been trying to make to up the The Red River Gorge in Kentucky at least once a month this year. It’s this magical place in the middle of nowhere where climbers from all over the world gather to hone their Sport Climbing skills. There are very few places you can go east of Colorado and have 1,400+ bolted sport routes accessible in such a small area. Each area you go to has it’s own world class climbing routes. On top of that I just love the community. I’ve never been there and not met climbers from France or Germany or Canada or Sweden or China. Such a diverse community with climbing connecting all of us.
This trip was based on taking my friend Sarah climbing outside for the first time. I met Sarah on a solo adventure i did back in March for my birthday. I drove down to Florida and spent some time on the beach and kayaking around an island there. Sarah works for a climbing gym there and we got to climb a little bit together one afternoon. There’s not many rocks over 10ft tall in Florida so I invited her to come up to Tennessee to climb anytime and i’d take her out. But why not take her to The Red instead. Start big.
While we were there we made a bunch of friends including Will and Steven. Joined up our forces and spent the next couple days learning and climbing harder and harder routes. Such an amazing time and great friendship and community. This trip took place a month ago and last week i went to the red again and met up with Will and Steven to climb. Climbing creates such a strong community anywhere you go. I love it.
The first day of climbing i didn’t take any pictures because i was teaching and wanted be focused on safety and making the experience as fun as possible. The Second day when we teamed up with Will and Steven it gave me more leeway to hang up on a cliff and get some shots of everyone. We climbed at a wall called The Land Before Time Wall in Muir valley. Decently small wall with some easier routes, but containing some really awesome rock features that i tried to capture. Later we went to Phantasia Wall where i got to do a harder overhung route called Creep Show(5.10d). Super fun route with a lot of different styles of moves. I’ll definitely climb it again. I set my tripod up so i could capture some pictures of myself climbing it.
Super fun adventure and great friends. Two things that make life the best it can be.
