BURST
With over 4,000 routes, Kentucky’s Red River Gorge is one of the country’s best sport crags—and it just got even better. A new crag, The Venue, recently debuted. Inside an epic, stunning cave lie some of the hardest sport lines in the Southeast. We spoke with pro climbers and the crag’s developer to get a sneak peak of the Red’s new crown jewel.
Climbers gained access to The Venue through the largest land acquisition by climbers in U.S. history that occurred in early 2025. The Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition (RRGCC) struck a deal with a landowner to purchase 718 acres and 14 miles of cliffline, a massive expansion in climbing land. The Venue sits within an entirely new area: the 582-acre Cave Fork Recreational Preserve.
Inside route development at The Venue, Red River Gorge
The defining feature of The Venue, a massive 120-foot cave, demanded an experienced developer. Jonathan Hӧrst, a Utah-based professional climber originally from Pennsylvania, first learned about it from the initial local developer, John Weaver, back in 2020.
“There was no expectation it could ever be climbed on,” Hӧrst says, “because it was private oil land. But we had it in the back of our mind that this epic crag existed at the Red.” When the purchase was finalized, Hӧrst, who grew up climbing at the Red, jumped at the chance to be part of the project.
Compared to other crags, The Venue posed a challenge. “It’s relatively complex,” Hӧrst says. “It’s not something that you can just rappel into and bolt top down because it’s so steep.” The solution? Bolt from the ground up. “It’s this really adventurous process where you’re uncovering hold by hold, as if you’re the climber, but you’re the first person to ever see it,” he reflects. “It was kind of the culmination of my route developing experience.”
While RRG has a plethora of hard, overhung routes, the cave routes at The Venue have a different character. Instead of the standard pocket-pulling up steep routes, where the crux primarily consists of fighting pump, The Venue routes contain distinct, bouldery cruxes. “You are actually doing really hard moves,” Hӧrst explains. “It’s not just this monotonous paddling. You’re doing adventurous sequences and climbing left and right around the bolt line. That adds a lot to the style, which you don’t find a lot at the Red.”
The Venue climbing routes
The Venue has routes ranging from 5.8 to a potential 5.15. Currently, 47 routes are documented on Mountain Project, and Hӧrst says there’s potential for a few more in the area. A standout is Restless Minds (5.14a), which Hӧrst says might be the best of the grade in all of the Red. Olympic climber and outdoor crusher Jesse Grupper onsighted the route, a particularly difficult challenge given that there was virtually zero chalk on it. “It just falls up from the middle of the cave. It has a series of several boulders that are pretty powerful,” he says.
Several unsent projects exist at The Venue, including Poeima, a 5.14+ that Hӧrst is currently working. “It can go toe to toe with any route I’ve been on in my life. It is just spectacular,” he says. Poeima, which is the Greek word for “work” or “creation” has a bit of everything: pumpy climbing, terrible feet, intense crimpy bouldering sequences, and a dyno to the final clipping jug. He’s also got a potential 5.15 in the works: Gold Streak. If he can send and the grade holds, it will be the first standalone 5.15 at RRG (there’s a 5.14d/5.15a at Bob Marley crag called Southern Smoke Direct).
But you don’t have to climb 5.14 to appreciate The Venue. Due to the amphitheater shape of the crag, “There are some flatter walls that have easier climbs. As it [the wall] continues and gets deeper, there are more options for harder routes,” Grupper explains. A 5.10 and 5.13 climber could go there together, for example, and both have a rip-roaring good time.
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When Emily Harrington climbed at The Venue in October, one of her favorite routes was Coastin’ (5.12b). “It was superb and incredibly steep following a crack feature,” Harrington recalls. “It was wild to think that grade could exist in that steepness and length, but the holds are remarkably giant and it actually had some sequential movements as well, which made it feel pretty unique.”
Decades old and still growing
The Red is known for many five-star “classic routes,” like Golden Ticket (5.14a) and Pure Imagination (5.14c), which many pro climbers try to tick at some point in their career. However, this hard climbing misses an important part of the equation. “People, especially among my [young] age, are just always out there trying to send the route that they’ve seen on Instagram or the classic line, that’s got a bunch of sends,” Hӧrst says. “And as a result, I think the younger climbing community has lost the connection to the adventure of route development.”
Hӧrst hopes that new crags like The Venue encourage climbers to embrace this creative, altruistic process. “It’s cool that opportunities like this allow the paradigm to maybe shift back towards wanting to not just send existing climbs, but develop them for others,” he says
In a time when climbers face access issues across the country, opening a new crag like The Venue is a demonstrable win and a reminder of what local climbing organizations like RRGCC can accomplish.
The Red has been around for decades, and through grassroots activism, it’s still growing. “Gaining access to The Venue not only showcases why the Red River Gorge stands out as a world-class climbing destination, but it also underscores the importance of supporting your local climbing organization,” RRGCC’s Marketing Director Tara Taylor explains.
“It’s just a really big kudos to the Access Fund and RRGCC to make a project like this happen,” Grupper says. “And I hope it’s a blueprint for the rest of the country in what’s possible when you have a diverse group of stakeholders that are interested in preserving rock.”
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