Up in the hills of northern Kentucky sits a protected natural area that is almost unknown outside the hiking, climbing, and local communities.
On my recent trip to catch the Total Solar Eclipse back in April I decided to take a bit of a scenic route. My trip would take me up through the town of Hazard, Kentucky (no relation to the Duke boys), where I did a bit of fossil hunting. Kentucky isn’t exactly the first place you probably think of when you think of fossils, but the state has a rich history that goes back from the ancient sea beds to the old carboniferous forests that resulted in the region’s coal. In the Hazard area, you can find leaf imprints hidden amongst the rocks if you know where to look and are patient. Unfortunately for me, I was on a bit of a time crunch, and this trip wasn’t particularly successful.
No matter, though, I continued on my journey to a place I had briefly visited once before: the Red River Gorge. I wanted to break up my long drive toward St. Louis with a hike.
One other thing you probably don’t think of when Kentucky is brought up is stone arches. Surprisingly, the area around the Red River contains the most arches east of the Mississippi with 150 known. According to the National Park Service this is second only to Arches National Park itself out in Utah. The Red River has long been carving through this region creating many canyons, bridges and arches out of the sandstone.
Off the beaten path
I had visited Natural Bridge, the most commonly visited spot, many years ago but this time I wanted to see something a bit more… off the beaten path. This led me to the Copperas Falls trailhead. Unlike the arches out west, the ones in the Red River Gorge aren’t all that easy to find. They are mostly located in dense forests, and many of them are not very large. Hopewell Arch is one of the most famous not located on an official trail. This arch looks like a double arch despite not officially qualifying as one.
You get to this arch by hopping a small creek and following a narrow path up a steep slope. A bit of easy climbing will lead you right underneath it.
On this particular day, water dripped from the top of the arch pretty incessantly, so unless I wanted to get wet, I had to watch where I was standing. A couple of raindrops on the lens resulted in this shot, which I found pretty cool.
After enjoying the arch for a little while I continued back down the hill and on to Copperas Falls. I had seen photos of this waterfall before but I did not realize just how tall it was until I saw it in person.
The falls are around 40-50 feet high and are truly impressive when you turn the corner to see them for the first time. The people in the middle left of this image give some sense of scale.
The falls pour over a large sandstone outcrop that forms a large cave behind them. This leaves plenty of room to walk behind and get some very cool shots of the waterfall. There aren’t a ton of places you can do this on the East Coast and each one is special.
You can climb up from each side of the falls as well and even stand right at the top where it flows over. I didn’t do that on this day, but I climbed up the rocks on the side to get a wide shot of the area. The blue/green water was stunning.
Unfortunately, I had to conclude my trip to the RRG and continue on. I plan to get back to the area this summer and do more hiking and check out more of the arches.
