Re-release of WEKU.
Deep in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, famous for its sandstone arches, Curtis Rogers and Jereme Ransick make their way through the undergrowth along a shallow stream with rhododendron branches sticking out from its sides. There are no trails. They rely on a phone’s GPS and a bit of memory.
“I think I passed through, but it didn’t rain…” Rogers said after taking a wrong turn while Ransick checked the map on his phone again.
They continue walking, through cobwebs and mud. They climb up the mountain on their hands and knees. Finally, they reach it: a rock face with metal bolts leading upwards in vertical lines.
Ransick and Rogers are members of the Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition, who installed the bolts for climbing. They have big plans for this massive rock face – and a state law that would make it easier for them to tackle similar rock faces.
“This is where we started because the mountain was so high and just begged to be climbed,” Rogers said. “The vision is that eventually there would be a parking lot and hiking trails that we would have walked to get here.”
But to make all this happen, they need a key partner: the landowner. Rogers and Ransick don’t own the land. It belongs to a real estate developer named Ian Teal. who wants to turn it into a cabin resort – which met with some resistance.
Sometimes the best climbing spots are on private property. That is why climbers want Kentucky expands its recreational use law to make it clear that landowners are indeed protected from liability claims when people use their cliffs.
Teal said before he bought the property, climbers were not allowed there.
“The previous owner and I were really good friends, but … the only reason he didn’t want to do it was purely legal,” Teal said. “He really thought he could get sued.”
Teal recently signed a legal agreement with the climbing association in case someone gets injured on his land. Teal hopes that climbing will attract people to his cabins. He plans to charge for parking at the cliff and for the trails that will be built to it – something other climbing areas in the area already do.
Rogers also believes that enshrining climbing in state law would be a boon for tourism.
“There is a segment of the population around the world that thinks of climbing when they think of Kentucky as much as they think of bourbon, horse racing or anything else,” Rogers said.
Rogers wants Kentucky lawmakers to make it easier for private landowners to allow climbers onto their cliffs. They want to add the term “rock climbing” to a state law that already protects landowners from lawsuits if someone is injured during a recreational activity on their land. They also hope to expand the law’s definition of “land” to include rocks and boulders.
Currently, the law lists a number of examples, from hunting to horseback riding to picnicking, but climbing is not included.
A clear explanation would give landowners like Teal a little more certainty.
“This law is very important for all of us because it gives us a little bit more guarantees,” Teal said.
Kentucky isn’t the only state where climbers are lobbying for these protections. Daniel Dunn is a member of a climber advocacy group called Access Fund. He says in recent years they’ve helped pass similar laws in Colorado, Texas and West Virginia.
“In states with great climbing potential and a lot of private land, this is a no-brainer and an easy thing for us to do,” Dunn said.
Dunn lives in eastern Tennessee. He says climbing is especially good for the central Appalachian states, which are looking to move away from the dying coal industry.
“We need something new,” Dunn said. “We’ve discussed a sort of unofficial theme: From the coal to the rocks. That’s kind of our little slogan for the pitch line.”
Dunn said that in his experience, state leaders are generally quite comfortable adding climbing to their land-use laws, since it is usually just a clarification of a regulation that is already enshrined in law.
The Kentucky climbers received a positive response when they proposed the additional language to lawmakers a few weeks ago. They are working to find a bill sponsor and get an official bill in place. Once it is ready, they hope Kentucky lawmakers will approve it at their next meeting in January.
Originally published by WEKU.
Republished with permission.
https://www.weku.org/the-commonwealth/2024-08-13/kentucky-rock-climbers-want-state-law-to-help-them-get-on-private-cliffs
