A Red River Gorge Thanksgiving Pilgrimage 

A Southern climbing trip always begins by packing the Toyota station wagon with the tent, stove, two packs and a rack, rope, food, beer, sleeping bags, a banjo, deer scent, neck sunscreen… the usual. But this year, three days shy of Thanksgiving, I crammed into the car a large, 40-pound bag of grade-A guilt. 

My mother had called a few days prior, wondering if I might find it in black heart and chalked hands to join her at my grandparents home in Maine for Thanksgiving. “They might not be alive much longer,” she said. “This might be the last time we…”      

“They seem plenty healthy to me,” I answered, recalling the soberly austere-led lives they led—no meat, no booze, no preservatives, and not a lot of fun. Between them, my grandparents were pushing 180 years, and though with each day they were geriatrically slipping through the cracks of life, I figured they’d be alive for another year. 

Hanging up the phone, I felt torn. Naturally, no matter how distant they become, family blood is a precious thing despite how successful you are at rebelling against everything they stand for in your youth. But I have a family of my own now which consists of a Berlin-born wife whose concept of Thanksgiving is about as foreign to her as a pair of tight leather lederhosen is to me. 

So, with a three-day weather window promising sunny skies and chilly nights, we headed for the Red River Gorge in the bluegrass state of Kentucky—Thanksgiving be-damned. 

Now for those in the know, the Red is, bar none, one of this country’s best crags. For those out of the know, the Red is a destination yet to be ticked off sooner rather than later. Besides several lifetimes of routes and its varied walls of splitter trad cracks and sporty finger-numbing face and roofs, the Red is a vast and complicated watershed of canyons and sub-canyons—hollers, as the locals call them—where sandstone bands rise proudly out of the rhododendron shrubbery, the pines and deciduous trees, trees that make every attempt to hide all the climbing potential. 

Well-earned hyperbole aside, the Red is also one of the most climber-friendly places on the planet. Witness the “Climbers Only” sign tacked to a tree outside Miguel’s, the climbers hang and campground, which so happens to also have the best pizza outside of Italy and the cheapest camping you’ll find on either side of the Mississippi. Or the tribes of climbers inside lifting another slice and an Ale 8 (or a beer half-assed shrouded in aluminum paper veiled from the dry county authorities) with sandstone scabbed hands, climbing gear and backpacks hanging from the ceiling above their natty-haired heads. 

The Red is a place beyond comparison, but if I were to go looking for one I’d be forced to stretch the imagination a little and say it reminds me of Indian Creek. That is, if you were to cut down all the trees at the Red, take out all the homes, haul away all the thrashed cars on blocks, dismantle the oil wells, put away the Bible, and chop some bolts you’d almost—almost—think you landed in the Utah desert with the Red’s canyons and roads snaking amongst big cliffs. But that’s not the point. The Red does just fine without succumbing to comparisons.