Red River Gorge
Trip and game report
The Red River Gorge is a sandstone climbing mecca in the heart of Kentucky. We spent the past week ticking off classics, playing board games with family, and doing some mountain biking!
Muir Valley
Muir valley is a bit like an outdoor climbing gym with well equipped routes, trails with easy signage to distinct walls, manicured areas with benches at the cliff base, and even little emblems marking the route names at the base of the wall. This accessibility lent it self well for some quick afternoon visits to get in a few pitches throughout the trip. We visited some ol’ favorites to get a feeling back for the sandstone plates, pockets, and iron ridged crimps of the Red. The Bruise Brothers wall is stacked with moderate warm ups and great first leads but can’t get packed on weekends so it was a pleasure to visit mid-week and find only a couple other parties and plenty of available routes.
Since we’ve frequented Muir Valley in the past, we wanted to check out some walls we haven’t visited. So, we made our requisite stop at Miguel’s and picked up the guide books for Miller Fork and the North Red River Gorge.
Chocolate Factory
Next, we checked out the iconic Chocolate Factory wall that harbors two of the Gorge’s hardest 5.14s, Pure Imagination and Golden Ticket. Although they are cool to gawk at, we’re obviously nowhere near trying routes in that ballpark, try several orders of magnitude less in difficulty, like the 5.10s Oompa and Loompa. Even these we found pumpy and pushing our meager endurance to the limit. These routes served as a reality check and although the Red is known for its enduro-fest overhanging sport routes, we found ourselves way out of climbing shapes and more psyched to check out some mellow trad routes.
Kate Otte on Oompa 5.10b at the Chocolate Factory wall.
Miller Fork Recreation Preserve (MFRP)
We were previously scared off from MFRP due to the rough road required for access and warning of 4-WD and high clearance requirements, but with our upgrade from a Corolla to a RAV4 we were ready to check it out. On our first day at MFRP, we went to the Secret Garden wall to get on some easier sport routes and trad climb two sweet cracks, Fuzzy Side Up (5.7) and Tinkerbell’s Panties (5.9). I got in my crack fix and regained some confidence with bomber hand jams and placing gear in sandstone.
North Gorge
In the Northern part of the gorge, we checked out the Phantasia wall, with an awesome 1 minute approach hike. There, we got on the classic one move wonder Creature Feature (5.9) that provided a fun “hero” move, cutting feet and swinging out a huge roof to easy plate climbing above. We also found Pogue Ethics (5.9+) to be an enjoyable surprise route. On our next trip back I hope to climb St. Alfonso’s crack and Attack of the Sand Shark! On our last day, we did two quick pitches at Pebble Beach before hitting the road back to Philly, a cool mini pinnacle top-out on Arrowhead (5.7) and the tight hands crack Environmental Impact (5.7). The classic Central Scrutinizer route was wet and we’ll try to get on it next trip.
Sugarcamp Mountain Prestonsburg, KY
We took a “rest day” to check out the single track mountain biking at Sugarcamp mountain about an hour outside the gorge. Here, our friend Brian acted as tour guide and showed us his preferred route up the mountain with about a 50 min 1,200 ft climb to the top. We then wound and traversed our way down finding a great variety of flowing trails and technical features. We had a blast and will definitely encourage our friends to visit when they’re in the area.
Strava map of our bike ride at Sugarmountain.
Games - Tokaido and 7 wonders
On this trip, we brought a dufflebag full of boardgames to play with the family. It was hard to find dedicated time to play with a 1 year old and 3 year old running around but we carved out some time and taught the adults in the family Tokaido and 7 Wonders. Tokaido was a good warm up and plays well with 4 people. Its also a relatively easy game to teach and we found ourselves reiterating what each symbol on the board means at least 5 times. The family matriarch was out to a strong lead, getting two or the panorama scenes completed early, but Kate ultimately caught up and won with the end of game bonuses. 7 Wonders was a bit more of a step-up in complexity and strategy than other games we’ve played with the family. Its one of our favorites and we were happy to introduce it to them and the new player won quite a wide margin! Kate and I will blame it on the fact that we were distracted by teaching instead of employing good strategy ;).
Overall it was a great trip and we love the Red River Gorge. We look forward to heading back down around Thanksgiving. Maybe we’ll even have a prototype of First Ascent to bring along!
-Garrett