After hiking at natural bridge for years, the family decided to venture out into the wild wilderness of Red River Gorge. The gorge is much wilder than the natural bridge park, which is probably why I liked it so much. It definitely reminded me of playing in the woods behind our house growing up as a kid. The only challenge is getting two four year old girls through the rugged trails.
On our first trip to the gorge, two weeks ago, we went through Nada tunnel to hike the rough trail towards Gray’s arch. We were amazed driving through Nada tunnel. Who knew such a raw relic of the early 1900’s was sitting in our back yard. The tunnel really set the tone for the rest of the hike.
We started down the rough trail from Hwy 77. We were teased at the beginning with several nice bridges over the stream the trail followed. Eventually, the bridges stopped and our daughters had a blast finding ways to cross the stream hoping from stone to stone. Eventually, the trail started to lead into the hills following the cliff lines. About the time we reached the peak of the hill, two things happened. We saw a storm coming on the horizon and our daughters started whining about how tired they were. So, we high tailed it back to the car and headed home, not quite making it to Gray’s arch.
After enjoying our time on the first hike, we decided to go back again before school started. Jimmy Kosieniak had been trying to get me to go rock climbing with him. Since we were going back, we decided to meet up with him and I would give rock climbing a try.
First, I watched Jimmy start ascend the wall. Quickly working his way up the wall, putting our safety rope in place. Jimmy made it look so easy, I thought this was going to be a fun little masculine exercise.
Boy was I wrong. It started with me putting my size 10 foot in a size 8 shoe. Toes curled under, I started to climb up the wall, or so I thought. I had the toughest time learning how to hug the wall and trust the climbing shoes to hold my big butt on the wall. I must have fallen at least 5 times in the first 10 feet of the wall. Finally, I made it past the first 10 feet and started to fly up the middle section of the wall. Then I got to the point were you had to hold on with a little half inch lip on the wall with your feet and hands.
It was this point that I yelled down to Adam, my belay, to hold tight cause I was going to fall, and did. I regrouped and suddenly saw a line towards the top, but then I got stuck again. This time, my arms and legs were shaking, my hands were getting really sweaty and I knew I didn’t have the strength in my arms to keep moving up. I yelled down to Tammy to take a picture cause I was done.
This was a lot of fun and my girls absolutely enjoyed the “party.” They can’t wait to go on another hike to a party and see daddy climb another wall. I just need to find shoes that actually fit so my toes don’t hurt so much the next day!
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