WOLFE COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — The rocks and cliffs in the Red River Gorge make it an international destination for climbers to visit, especially on the brink of its peak season.
"It's a really neat time if you're a rock climber to have access to cliff line to newly develop,” said Jereme Ransick, chair of the access and acquisitions committee for the Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition (RRGCC).
When Ransick speaks about new cliff line, he means it, after the RRGCC made a major land acquisition. In February, the RRGCC purchased land from the Ashland Wildlife Management Area in Lee County for a little more than $1.6 million.
“From a dollar perspective, it's the largest acquisition that a climbing organization has pulled off in in history,” Ransick said. “This is huge for me personally… really even at the 11th hour I wasn't confident that this was going to get pulled off.”
The acquisition included 718 acres of land, with 14 miles of cliff line. The coalition has eyed this property for nearly two decades.
“Conversations about this property started almost 20 years ago when we learned that Ashland was remediating the property and considering putting it up for sale,” Ransick shared.
The Ashland land was at one point used for oil extraction before it was turned into a wildlife management area.
“It had kind of just sat still for several decades and there wasn't climbing allowed on it,” said Billy Simek, executive director of the RRGCC. “There was you know like you could hunt and hike but that was pretty much it.”
“We learned in September 2023 that the property was actually going out to market,” Ransick added. “That's when we sort of had a serious call to action and a decision point on how we were going to handle this.
The coalition created a loose partnership with local business owners, real estate developers, and local property owners while also earning grant money to make the acquisition happen. Going forward, the coalition has the big task of preparing the property.
“We’ll have a forest plan for the entire property,” said Simek, to “kind of map out what we want to do as a master plan with the property and how to best work to conserve as much of it as we can and then preserve the areas that we're climbing on for future generations.”
“Dispersing these climbers is useful,” Ransick shared. “If everybody climbs in the same place, it's very hard for us, hard for us to maintain that property in the appropriate way and part of our mission is conserving the lands where we climb.”
Ransick also added that the land will be open for more than just climbing.
“We're going to have trails, so if you're interested in hiking, seeing waterfalls, arches, bird watching, we want the whole community to enjoy this property, and part of building the community forest with the funds from the US Forest Service, that is a key piece to this,” he added.
The RRGCC is on their final day of accepting donations for the Ashland acquisition. You can donate here.
You can also learn more at rrcgg.org.
