Red River Gorge – 11/7/24 to 11/9/24

I had finished spending a week in Madison, WI at my brother John’s house. John and I decided to do a couple of days of hiking at the Red River Gorge (RRG) in KY. We had planned a backpacking trip there a couple of years ago, but I came down with Covid and had to cancel that trip. So, this was my first time visiting the RRG.

Left Madison at 7:00am and drove straight through with only one stop for gas and lunch. Took 8 hours and with the time zone change, arrived at our campsite at 4:00.

We were camping at the Koomer Ridge Campground, which is the only public campground in the RRG National Forest. The campsites were first come first served, so I was a little nervous about obtaining a site. However, it was a weekday (Thursday) night and there was an occasional misty rain in the air. So, when I got there, there were only three other campers there, which left 40 campsites for me to choose from. I picked site #41, which was in the back and farthest from the road. Unfortunately, the campground turns off the water for the winter on November 1st, so we didn’t have access to the shower house or the water supply. At least we still had the pit toilets!! I had brought a gallon of drinking water, so that wasn’t a problem.

RRG has lots of cliffs, and it’s important to be careful. Here is the sign that was in the woods behind our campsite.

I set up my tent and did some reading while I waited for John to arrive. It took John an extra hour and a half to get there (didn’t use Waze, and took extra stops).

I helped John set up his hammock tent and then we ate dinner together. John cooked a dehydrated meal, and I made a sandwich and ate some fruit. We chatted for a while and then went to bed early. The temperature only got down to 55 degrees, so it was great sleeping weather.

Friday morning was forecast to be sunny, but started out cloudy. We ate some breakfast and drove John’s car out to the trailhead for our morning hike. We hiked the Auxier Ridge Trail out to Courthouse Rock. The weather cleared up as we went.

There were still some leaves on the trees, and we had some great views. Here are some pictures closer to Courthouse Rock.

The trails were not well marked, and I was glad that John had an app called Gaia on his phone to help us navigate. I’m definitely loading the Gaia app on my iPhone.

We had to scramble down quite a bit to the base of Courthouse Rock. And then we followed the Auxier Branch Trail along the valley to connect with the Double Arch Trail.

We hiked an out and back to Double Arch. It’s hard to see the second arch, as it is short, and directly above the big arch.

We hiked up out of the valley to a fire road and back to the car.

Our morning hike was 7 miles and 1,100 feet of climbing. It was early afternoon and we decided to stop at a BBQ restaurant for lunch. Afterwards, we returned to our campsite and hiked the Silvermine Arch Trail in the afternoon. This trail started from our campsite, and was an out and back hike.

Our afternoon hike was only two miles and 266 feet of elevation. So, for the day we did nine miles, which I was happy with as there was some difficult sections.

The rest of the day we hung out at the campsite. It was a beautiful afternoon with temperatures around 70 degrees. Lots of people came into the campground and it filled up by 4:00. Made dinner, did some reading and went to bed early.

The temperature got down to 45 degrees at night, but I was comfortable in my tent with a blanket. Woke up with the sun and had breakfast. John and I got an earlier start and drove to the Bison Way trailhead. It’s a small trailhead, but there was a parking spot for us.

We hiked the Bison Way Trail for a while to some unmarked trails to the Indian Staircase. The Indian Staircase was ranked as the best hike in RRG on a website I found. It was very strenuous, but had some awesome views. But no pictures of the hike. So, when we got to this part of the “trail”, I thought this was the Indian Staircase.

It led us to this great view.

But, we weren’t at the top of the ridge. We were at the bottom of the real Indian Staircase. Here is a picture of John going up the staircase.

Here is John’s picture of me climbing up the staircase.

That picture doesn’t do justice to how steep it was. Here is a picture of the staircase from the other side of the valley. In this picture, you can see some hikers at the bottom of the staircase.

I was glad to get to the top safely, and was doubly glad not to have to go down the staircase. We followed some sketchy trails for a while and made it to the Sheltowee Trail. Thank God for John’s Gaia app that helped us navigate that section.

We followed the Sheltowee Trail all the way back down to the Red River. There were several trees down on the trail, and I was sorry that I didn’t bring a saw to help clear them. The trees had been down for quite a while, and I was surprised that no one had removed them, yet.

When we got to the Red River, we wanted to take the suspension bridge over the river, but it had been damaged and was impassable.

So we backtracked to the road and walked the road back to the car. The morning hike was 7.5 miles and 1,000 feet of climbing.

We drove to a restaurant for lunch and checked the weather. The weather was calling for a nice afternoon, but for rain to come in overnight. Our original plan was to get in a hike in the afternoon, camp out overnight and break camp in the morning to head home. But we decided to forgo the afternoon hike and to just break camp after lunch and drive home that day. We wanted to avoid breaking down camp in the rain and the drying out of our gear when we returned home. So, we broke camp and said our goodbyes and I was home by 7:30 that night.

RRG is a great place to hike. And there are many more trails to explore there. Definitely a place that I want to come back to.