Our Red River Ruckus

After our time in West Virginia, we headed to Kentucky's fabled Red River Gorge, considered to be one of the world's premier sport climbing destinations.  We were very excited to visit a location with so much climbing, media coverage, community hype, and camping infrastructure - especially after all the time we'd already spent hiding from bad weather in the car, or in coffee shops that close at 2pm (really guys?).  When we rolled into town, we chose to stay at Lago Linda's Hideaway rather than the famous Miguel's Pizza because it had a reputation for having a quieter environment and we were still neck-deep in our grad school applications. 

Lago Linda's proved to be the perfect place for us.  The camping infrastructure was better than we could have imagined.  There is an electrically lighted, covered communal cooking area with a sink for washing dishes, a "Shakeout Lounge" with electricity, heat, and somewhat-spotty WiFi, and hot showers included in the price of camping.  The campground is only a couple miles from the PMRP, a land area owned by the RRG Climbers Coalition and home to a large number of classic routes of all grades, where we spent our climbing time.  Lago Linda's also hosts a long-term community of climbers from all over the country that were incredibly friendly and welcoming.  We spent a ton of time with this crew every day in the mornings as we waited for it to get warm enough to climb and in the evenings as we all chatted and waited for it to get late enough to legitimately go to bed after an exhausting day of hard climbing.  We planned rest days together, and would have movie nights or other communal TV time in the lounge.  With this atmosphere, life at Linda's often felt like a summer camp for climbers.

First morning in Kentucky.

 

Lago Linda's cooking area and lounge in the morning light.

Before coming to the Red, we had never really spent time in Appalachia, and our first few days in rural Kentucky were a bit of a culture shock.  After experiencing the distain and kind of intimidating glare of the cashier at the local grocery store, we learned that some counties are still dry, and that you can't buy beer on Sundays in others before 1:00 in the afternoon - or not at all on Sundays in others.  We learned by observing the many loose dogs on the roads, especially on the street after blind corners, that people in rural Kentucky have a fairly loose notion of dog ownership (and also learned to keep an eye out while on the road).  We learned from the countless billboards exclaiming the dangers of hell and that we should call the number listed below to be certain to save our souls, that there is a lot more religion - and of a very different style - than in our bohemian Pacific Northwest homeland.  We also heard at least three separate bible study conversations each time we went to the coffeeshop on our rest days, a very different conversation topic than the standard coffeeshop talk in Seattle.  One of the Kentucky culture highlights of our trip was the Beer Trailer, planted on the side of the main highway just inside a wet county near Lago Linda's.  The beer was okay to good, but the best part of the trailer was talking with the very stereotypically Kentucky locals that owned it and (for Chelsea) petting the resident Beer Trailer Kittens.  There were two, and whatever Seth says they were super adorable and had no fleas or ear mites.


Whether you agree with his politics or not,

this guy is probably better at making stencils than you are.

 

We thought the climbing at the Red was incredible.  Normally because of our different grade ranges deciding which crag to climb at has to be a compromise, but at the Red it was usually an easy decision.  Almost every crag is packed with routes, and there were often at least a few routes that each of us could get psyched on.  We spent a lot of time at Drive By Crag.  Seth got some mileage in on a few 5.10-s, and sent Breakfast Burrito (10d) and the classic Whip Stocking (11a).  Chelsea did work on most of the 5.12s and made quick work of Easy Rider, (13a, in three tries!) that she thinks deserves a classic rating.  We also spent a good amount of time at the Motherlode, where Chelsea got super psyched and finished a number of classic routes including Ale-8-One (12a), Stain (12c), Heart Shaped Box (12c), Resurrection (12c), 8 Ball (12d), Snooker (13a, in two attempts!), and 40oz of Justice (13a, three tries!).  Seth was less prolific at this crag but finished the steep 11b to the left at the Buckeye Buttress and got painfully close to Trust in Jesus (11b) before the temperature started to drop to uncomfortably low levels.  We spent almost as much time at the Chocolate Factory.  Highlights there include Chelsea's flash of Gilgamesh (12b), onsight of Dainty Butterfly (12c), and ascent of Malice (12c) - one of the burliest routes she tried at the Red.  Seth also did a gear ascent of a sandy, gritty crack corner with a double roof near the finish (5.10) that Chelsea thinks was the proudest, hardest, and most terrifying ascent of the trip.  We spent the most time at the aforementioned three areas, but also checked out a number of sectors throughout the PMRP.  Seth's favorite route of the trip was Amarillo Sunset (11b) at the North 40, the only route on the wall which featured a perfect line of big holds up an overhanging wall.  Chelsea couldn't pick a favorite.  Additionally, in our three weeks in the RRG, we are proud/sad to say we never made it outside of the PMRP section of the gorge so we'll just have to make a trip back.

 

Chelsea mid crux on Samurai, 5.12b.

(Check out the incredible cross-bedding! Nerd alert!!)

Seth working through Amarillo Sunset, 5.11b.

 

Chelsea on Resurrection (12c). Photo credit Erik Thatcher.

We spent more time at the Red than at any other destination on our trip so far, and during this time our lives developed into a fairly predictable set of routines.  Our rest days were particularly consistent and enjoyable: on one of our first bad-weather days, one of our friends from Linda's convinced a group of us to drive the 45min to Richmond KY (the nearest real town) to go to lunch at the Indian buffet there, and then took us all to the (as far as we could tell) one major coffeeshop in town.  After that introduction, on rest days a group of Linda's climbers would wake up slowly, pile into the car, drive to the Indian buffet to eat until we were totally stuffed, head to the coffeeshop for some non-spotty internet, go see a movie at the theater, grab groceries at the SuperKroger, and then drive back in the dark.  Each trip was memorable - for example, on the day we watched Captain Phillips, we were all so jumpy and tense afterwards that we had a super paranoid time in the grocery store - but the pattern was always familiar and fun. 

 

Overall, our experience at the Red River Gorge was super enjoyable and memorable. We were able to get out almost every day we wanted to, the infrastructure was great, and the community could not have been better.  We also learned some important individual lessons about ourselves and our different attitudes towards both travelling and climbing while we stayed at the Red, which we'll have to dedicate a future post to discussing.  We are proud of our climbing performances, how we dealth with the changing weather, and of what we learned about ourselves and our attitudes towards this trip and this sport.  The Red River Gorge was an amazing place to be and to climb. We'll definitely plan a trip back to climb the steep sandstone and tap into the community there.  We both have routes we need to finish, and the infrastructure and support at the Red makes it easy to want to go back.