A week at the Red May 19th - 25th, 2000 |
| Living in Chicago, the closest world class climbing was located at the Red River Gorge, seven hours away in the middle of Kentucky. I had gotten the opportunity to go and visit there for weekends before but the two days always passed too quickly and the driving was exhausting. In the Spring of 2000 my friends Jeff and Mike both had Spring Break at the same time and I was able to get a week off of work. We chose the Red River Gorge as our destination and I couldn’t wait to get to spend more than a couple days in a row there. The drive passed quickly and the first day we were there we met a nice climber named John who was also down for the week and looking for people to climb with. Seeing as he could lead way harder climbs than us and was happy to teach us more about climbing we were really excited. That week improved my climbing more than anything else had up to that point. When I arrived I had never redpointed anything harder than 5.9 and by the time I had left I had onsighted 5.10c. While we all learned a lot about climbing and pushed ourselves on the rock we also had a great week exploring lots of different crags, going caving, hanging out at Miguel’s, and just enjoying each others company. One of the highlights of the week was playing games based on strength, balance, and flexibility with some climbers from Poland in front of Miguel’s. With perfect weather and endless good climbs, that trip to the Red became a standard by which to judge many of my later trips by. |
