POWELL COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — After purchasing 718 acres of the Ashland Wildlife Management Area, the Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition (RRGCC) has a lot of work ahead to prepare new trails for hiking and climbing.
Down inside the Red River Gorge, a few trail workers are preparing a new path through the woods. The occasional orange tape wrapped around a tree stands out against the rest of the natural colors in the gorge.
"This gives us a general rough outline of where the trail is going to go and you can see way up there there's another one,” said Curtis Gale-Dyer, land manager for the RRGCC. “My role as the land manager is to survey the land and assess what kind of trails we'll need to put in and what kind of erosion's issues we'll have, especially at the base of the climbs.”
Wrapping the tape is one of the first steps of making a new trail through the wooded slopes.
“The process of laying out the trails is we first come out and kind of just get a general sense of where people are going to be spending their time,” Gale-Dyer said.
The orange tape provides a sight line for where trail surveyors like Gale-Dyer wants the pathway to go. Then, trail workers begin to put down pink flags, marking out where trail cutting will begin.
“It's very grueling work, but it is very, very, very rewarding,” said Aspen Goodwin, a trail worker.
Goodwin dug into the hillside, scraping away leaves, dirt, roots, and even tossing a few rocks out of the way to turn the slope into a flat path. Believe it or not, this trail-making process is beneficial towards conservation efforts in the Red River Gorge.
“It helps people spread out by giving them more climbing areas,” Goodwin said. “The more that people are able to spread out, the less that single humans will impact the land in a greater way. Instead of having 10 people on one trail, you have 1 person on 10 trails.”
“With climbing exploding as it has, having more opportunities and more climbs will help us spread out some of the people and reduce some of the impact of some of the crags,” Gale-Dyer added.
The land acquisition and trail building efforts also provide “a chance to help improve the economy in this area too with the tourism," he said.
Once the potential pathway is marked, Gale-Dyer said it takes experienced trail workers about an hour to cut 20 to 30 feet of a trail.
“This feels like this is one of the best ways for me to give back, is to take my knowledge and experience of trail cutting and trail building and bring it to the coalition to be able to help improve these areas and help other people be able to get some of those same experiences that I had from climbing,” Gale-Dyer noted.
While pointing out the trail cutting process, Gale-Dyer shared a few more details about why their process looks the way it does.
“Once we do start cutting trail what we try to do is create a bench,” Gail-Dyer said. He explained that the bench is the flat part of the trail that people walk on.
“Then we try to get kind of a nice gentle back slope and then we try to create a slope this way with just a slight tilt, about 70% out this way so that when water comes down it comes off the trail.”
The trail bench has the slight grade to help protect against erosion. Still, a slight grade is much better than the steep slope that once stood in the way.
With the new Ashland acquisition, just how many trails does Gale-Dyer plan on building in the 718 acres?
“I think the terminology will be a lot,” he said with a laugh.
The RRGCC is setting up trail days for anyone interested in helping with the trail building process. If you want to join, or have a group you would like to bring down, reach out to rrgcc@rrgcc.org for more information.
