Red River Exploration

My last trip was a mix of Red River Gorge, Kentucky, the Ohio River where West Virginia borders Ohio, and the highlands of West Virginia. The first day I drove at least eight hours to my shared accommodation near the Red River. I noticed there were many recently built cabins - assumedly for tourists or vacationers. My route coming in from the east had very few places to eat or gas up immediately before entering rt 11 - one of if not the main drags through the area - I ended up getting dinner at Hop’s - which I thought might not actually exist since it’s location is largely otherwise rural and doesn’t seem like it would have businesses there. I also got gas at a Marathon station where I actually had to physically lift the pump to get gas to start flowing , something I haven’t experienced in years. I should mention, this was a Tuesday night, so many businesses were closed that may be open later in the week (Thursday-Saturday generally). If you were hoping for gourmet food, Red River Gorge may not be the best place for that.

Hop’s website:

https://hopsatrrg.weebly.com/

Tuesday was taco night. I highly recommend the lamb - it was tender and flavorful and the soft corn tacos were delicious as well. The beef was just ok and the pasta salad side didn’t taste at all of the promised cheese. But, it does seem like they are making everything from scratch - though, fair warning, the food I encountered was pretty uneven. The vegan wine cake I had for dessert had a nice flavor, but was far too dense and crumbly to really enjoy.

The next day, I set off for Blackburn Rock. I will say, visually I was slightly disappointed by many of the overlooks I found during the planning process. For those challenged by mobility, a lot of the overlooks are a long (3+ mi) or difficult hike (cloudsplitter seemingly involving a bit of a rock climb with a rope to access the view at all, for example), and the popular Auxier Ridge area all of those view hikes are 4+ mi and 500+ ft of elevation gain. If you are coming to Red River Gorge for the first time, you will want to check out Chimney Top - an easy short hike of less than a mile roundtrip and minimal elevation gain (maybe 100 ft). I do find it very odd that Chimney Top is partially paved (as is the hike to creation falls and the hike to sky bridge, which really are the three top easy hikes in RRG. It’s like they paved it in 1992, and just left it that way, never patching it up when it eroded, and so half the trail has pavement over it, generally on the uphill sign. It just feels weirdly neglected, and this is a popular recreational destination so it’s odd they’ve never fixed it up. One of the mysteries of Appalachia.

I found Blackburn Rock by searching Alltrails for views, and selecting only “easy” trails. Blackburn Rock is a bit over 4 miles roundtrip, and 400 ft elevation gain. With a but that, if you have a mountain bike or an ATV/dirt bike you can basically ride/drive 3 of those 4 miles because they take place on what is the very same forest road you drive to the trail on - which is gated seasonally at the Hatton Ridge Cemetery. I assume the gate is open September to at least December - but I would definitely check with the Daniel Boone National Forest about the exact dates for that if you are planning to drive a vehicle down it. Otherwise, you have a 1.5 miles each way down what is road (not particularly steep either) following the ridgeline. RRG is interesting because the gorges extend out into finger-like projections. When I went, unfortunately, the periodic cicadas were loudly buzzing, and it was a little hotter than I would have liked in mid-June, and I definitely regret not applying bug spray, though it was more of an annoyance than a serious concern.

Once you reach a clear path leading off to the right with a small clearing in which you could park a vehicle or bike, the trail turns into a singletrack, natural service through a pleasant wooded area, albeit with very logged-over trees that were quite small, leading you to the overlook itself over the course of half a mile each way. This too felt not particularly steep. This leads us to the overlook itself, which I believe (but could be wrong) is looking at Spaas Creek flow downstream on its way to meet the Red River. Now, I also could be wrong, but I believe the view from Lover’s Leap at Natural Bridge State Park includes Blackburn Rock from far away, but it certainly looks in that direction, and it’s interesting to view both the main river’s course (as at Natural Bridge) and the snaking path of a tributary as well.

The most annoying problem with the overlook is there is a chasm between the table-flat rocks you can easily access on foot, and the large main rock that I assume is the one bearing the name Blackburn. It’s not necessarily that broad, maybe 3-4 feet, but it goes way down and would not be pleasant to miss, and after the soreness of hiking 2 miles, it’s something I, and likely you will skip jumping across if you are not very fit. I truly don’t understand why they cannot lay a board across or something like that. Some of these rocky outcroppings have outright boardwalks (obed scenic river comes to mind), and I understand that’s less feasible in a remote area like this, but it’s a shame I couldn’t access the rock that seemed to have the outright best view, although perhaps that wasn’t true and the view was much the same, but it looked like you could see downstream further from the main rock. I had no idea about the jump to the main rock when researching the trail. Mind you, you still get a very good view from the other rock, but keep in mind this is the usual remote trail situation - absolutely no railing and maybe 400 ft down to the valley if you make a wrong step. Be careful.

The view is quite beautiful, but not mindblowing, though certainly worth the hike. One of the things I noticed here, that was to become a bigger theme of my travels - was that you could spot potential overlooks on the other side of the cliffs and in different areas that look like they might offer different or better views - if they can even be accessed. I didn’t actually investigate if any of these other rocky outcroppings are actually accessible - but that might become a future project and defines the area in general that there’s often multiple vantage points set around a particular creek or river gorge - a bit distinct to other areas in Appalachia where that’s not necessarily often the case.

Blackburn Rock fefinitely looks better in cloudy weather, which I did not get sadly. It also looked to me like you could see a bit more of a panorama if they cleared some trees that were blocking the view looking upstream (again a common theme here and elsewhere in Appalachia). Now, the road to the trail is another story. I remember reading one comment on Alltrails that the view was not worth the drive and the hike, and I can understand that, but I think if you are minded towards looking for easier trails it’s worth a look. When you make the turnoff from 713/Indian Creek Rd, you may think, wait what this tiny narrow gravel road is the way to the trail? Yes, that’s actually it. No, it’s not just someone’s driveway. And really, the first part is the scariest because the road has had some flood damage that created deep channels in it making the steeper bits extra scary. I was very thankful for AWD. You could probably make it in a sedan, if you are brave. I am not brave. It isn’t that bad, it’s just somewhat scary and the road is quite narrow. Once the road gets up to the ridge and flattens out a bit, it’s not quite so bad, just narrow (many of the roads in RRG are quite narrow, this becomes a theme), and I only encountered one large-ish branch blocking the road which I didn’t remove but did trigger my car’s obstacle detection feature where it turns on the front camera and beeps at you. If there were more branches blocking the road, you might be out of luck. Oh, and the road is entirely closed in winter (though it may be accessible by dirt bike or mountain bike - I’m not sure - that’s something to ask the Forest Service if you have that specific quest in mind. Also, if you do have a bike you could definitely just ride it from the main road (713) all the way past the gate and to where the singletrack trail branches off to avoid the semi-harrowing drive. There were definitely points while driving to the trailhead where you could sense the ridge was extremely narrow and that less than 50 ft away on both sides were steep dropoffs.

As mentioned before, you can drive most of this trail in hunting season, but it closes for the winter, and driving past the gate involves going around some fallen branches and I wouldn’t try it without a rugged vehicle you trust. Also, the road just getting to Spaas Creek Rd/Hatton Ridge Rd has some pitfalls. Not that I encountered - but someone else mentioned trying to come from RRG @ Slade KY and took a back way to get there via I believe Pumpkin Hollow Road, which may be part of the Daniel Boone backcountry road system which is basically made for Jeeps and 4-wheelers. If you see the backcountry road sign and you don’t have a rugged vehicle - turn around and make sure you try to stick to main roads to get to the Blackburn Rock trailhead - no matter what your GPS tells you. The drive I took to get to the trail from my accommodation near Rogers KY was perfectly fine though not as scenic as I might have hoped - essentially looping around the RRG to the east and north since you can’t really go through it via road anyways. One plus of this route vs going the shorter way from RRG to the trail by going west around the gorge is that you stop at Broke Leg Falls along the way. There’s a sign, turn off, follow the short road to the parking area. And then from there there’s steps down to a nice waterfall - maybe 30-40 ft of steps - nothing too crazy, but not easy easy either. Then when the steps end if you want to get down to the very bottom of the waterfall, you have to traverse an unofficial, unmarked path either around the back of the waterfall or in front of it to the bottom - both looked quite slippery to me despite it not having rained much in the preceding days - and I didn’t do that, and you can still view the fall quite nicely from the bottom of the steps. The Broke Leg Falls site also has picnic areas - including one that was covered I believe, and a porta-potty.

I drove back to my room-for-rent after the hike, had dinner, and went to bed. If you are large, disabled, elderly, or out-of-shape - the hike to Blackburn Rock will be your whole day - but for fit people it definitely could be a half day thing - and definitely so if you shortcut the road section with a bike or other vehicle.

The next day I woke up a bit late and I think I arrived at the Natural Bridge Skylift around 10:30 am.

https://naturalbridgeskyliftandgiftshop.com/

The single most confusing part of this place is that nearby-ish there is a different State Park called Sky Bridge State Park (which features a natural bridge), whereas the one with the chairlift (skylift) accesses a State Park called Natural Bridge State Park. That out of the way - I found this chairlift terrifying. I have done other scenic chairlifts - mainly over in West Virginia at Canaan Valley Resort State Park - and that one is not so scary. This one takes you pretty high up off the ground and you are just exposed with a lap bar at least. It is also somewhat expensive