Rock climbers hoping for recreational use statute expansion

The Kentucky Recreational Use Stature encourages landowners to make their property available for a number of outdoor activities while protecting owners from legal action by limiting their liability. The statute covers a range of activities, but one group hopes it can be expanded by adding a few more items to the list.

Billy Simek moved to the Red River Gorge in 2018. He’s now the executive director of the Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition.

“Our mission is promoting public access to rock climbing in the gorge,” Simek said.

Rock climbers are hoping for an expansion to the recreational use statute to continue to grow public access. As of now, the statute includes activities like hunting, camping, swimming, and hiking. It doesn’t currently include rock climbing, bouldering, and rappelling.

“We do believe we would be covered,” Simek said, “Just that specific language is what we'd like to add in. So it's not really a massive change or anything. We get so many people that come in every year to go climbing, why not have it specifically mentioned?”

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It comes down to liability for landowners like April Reefer, who owns the Graining Fork Nature Reserve just across the road from Hop’s.

“The law has never been tested,” Reefer said. “I think anybody would be crazy not to have any liability insurance on their property allowing people to come on because people can still sue you even if there is a law that protects, so we do have a cost with insurance.”

The hope is that a law expansion would add rock climbing to the list, giving landowners more protection. In turn, Simek hopes the landowners will open up their property for climbing activities as well.

“Having liability protection and something like that in place is a pretty big thing that in our talks with landowners to be like, you are protected under this state rec statute. Because that’s normally the first thing that anybody says, they’re like, oh, liability.”

Simek and his team spoke with state legislators at the beginning of the summer.

“We had just an initial presentation with them and met with some of the state senators who were all mostly in favor and everybody seemed like it was kind of a no-brainer to do.”

The climbers hope the expansion will be introduced at the next state session in 2025.