Kentucky rock climbers want state law to help them get on private cliffs

Deep in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, famous for its sandstone arches, Curtis Rogers and Jereme Ransick are bushwhacking along a shallow creek where rhododendron branches jut out from the sides. There are no trails. They rely on a phone’s GPS and a decent bit of memory.

“I think I walked through it but it hadn’t rained…” Rogers said after a wrong turn, while Ransick checked the map on his phone again.

They continue on, through spider webs and mud. They scramble uphill on their hands and knees. Finally, there it is: a wall of rock with metal bolts going up in vertical lines.

Ransick and Rogers are with the Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition. They put in the bolts for climbing. They have big plans for this massive cliff – and a state law that would make it easier for them to get on more like it.

“This is where we started because it was tall and begged to be climbed,” Rogers said. “Ultimately the vision is that there’s a parking lot and trails we would’ve hiked 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’s owned by a real estate developer named Ian Teal who wants to turn it into a cabin resort — which has attracted some opposition.

Sometimes the best rock climbing spots are on private land. That’s why the climbers want Kentucky to expand its recreational use law to clarify that landowners are indeed protected from liability when people use their cliffs.

Teal said before he bought the land climbers weren’t allowed here.

“The previous owner, he and I were really good friends, but… the only reason he wouldn't do it [was] just for legal reasons,” Teal said. “He really thought he could be sued.”

Teal recently made a legal deal with the climbers coalition in case someone gets hurt on his land. Teal hopes climbing will draw people to his cabins. He plans to charge for parking to access the cliff and the trails that are being built to get to them — something other climbing spots in the area already do.

In a similar vein, Rogers thinks having rock climbing cemented in state law would be a boon to tourism.

“There’s a subset of the population around the world that thinks of rock climbing when they think of Kentucky just as much as they think of bourbon or horse racing or anything else,” Rogers said.

Rogers wants Kentucky lawmakers to make private landowners more comfortable about letting climbers onto their cliffs. They want the words “rock climbing” inserted into a state law that already protects landowners from being sued if someone gets hurt during a recreational activity on their land. They also hope the definition of “land” in the law can be updated to include rocks and boulders.

Right now, that law lists some examples — things ranging from hunting and horseback riding to picnicking. But it does not include rock climbing.

Having it spelled out would make landowners like Teal a little more comfortable.

“This is very important legislation to all of us, because it does give that extra bit of a guarantee,” Teal said.

Kentucky isn’t the only state where rock climbers have pushed for that protection. Daniel Dunn is with a rock climbing advocacy group called the Access Fund. He says in the past few years, they helped get similar laws passed in Colorado, Texas and West Virginia.

“Where there are states that have lots of rock climbing potential and lots of private land, it’s a no-brainer, it’s an easy thing for us to work on,” Dunn said.

Dunn lives in east Tennessee. He says rock climbing is especially good for central Appalachian states searching to decouple from a dying coal industry.

“We need something new,” Dunn said. “We have a sort of unofficial thing we’ve talked about: from coal to crags. It’s sort of like our little pitch line slogan.”

Dunn said in his experience, state leaders are generally pretty happy to add rock climbing to their land use laws. After all, it’s usually just clarifying a policy that is already in law.

The climbers in Kentucky got a positive response when they pitched the extra words to legislators a few weeks ago. They’re working on securing a bill sponsor and pulling together an official bill. With that in place, they hope Kentucky lawmakers will approve it when they meet for the next legislative session in January.