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If the Red River Gorge is one of the most famous climbing areas in the United States, then Miguel Ventura must surely be our most famous patriarch. His name—first name, possessive—adorns a yellow wall in eastern Kentucky, his smiling wife’s face, Susan, carved surrealistically into the stout wooden door below. I can picture it. You can picture it. The German woman you met that one time in Geyikbayırı can picture it. Miguel’s.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the world famous pizza joint. That they’ve stuck around for so many years is as much a testament to the Gorge’s mind-boggling Corbin sandstone as it is the extended Ventura family, who have fought tooth and nail for its existence while building one of the most beloved community centers in the climbing world.
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Dario Ventura, Miguel’s eldest son, is waffling. Should we go to Fruit Wall, one of the best crags at the sweeping Miller Fork Recreational Preserve, or the Motherlode, home to the steepest, longest routes at the Red? He’s got a first-time visitor sitting shotgun, a pasty Canadian with very little endurance, and he wants to make an impression. “Ah, let’s go to the ‘Lode,” he finally decides. “I like the approach better.” We peel off KY 11 heading southbound and link gravel roads with driveways, passing a secluded wooded house—his—with a big front porch that looks out to a rolling field and pond. His one-year-old rescue dog races after our black pickup truck as we roll past the house, down a hill, cross a narrow grassy bridge, up another hill, and speed toward the horizon line. We park randomly in the long grass, unload our packs, and Dario picks his spot through the woods, dropping downhill with an apology: “Sorry it’s so overgrown, I haven’t climbed much these last three months!”
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The day before, in an interview with a film crew making a documentary about the restaurant’s fortieth, Dario spoke candidly at a picnic table while six patrons kicked a hacky sack across the gravel lot. The family business is growing rapidly, he said, the summers are hectic, and the autumn even more so. Winter is when he finally gets his time to climb consistently, where he’ll take down a couple 5.13b’s if he’s feeling fit.
There was supposed to be a changing of the guard last year, when Miguel turned 70 and said he would retire, leaving the operation in front of his house to his two sons, Mark and Dario. “But he still works here every day,” Mark says, laughing. “And there’s no end in sight for my mom.”
Fair enough. A tight operation like Miguel’s dodges franchising opportunities and meaningful expansion like a ‘Lode climber tries not to get “bricked.”
We head to Dario’s restaurant, Redpoint Barbecue, for dinner that night. His 12-year-old daughter Cedar greets us at the door in her all-black hostess uniform and proudly waves us over to “the best” table at the joint, a six-seater on the corner edge of a large outdoor patio, beneath a yawning white tent that barely blocks out the low, late-evening sun. Mark and his wife Ali soon arrive with their young kids in tow, pulling up more chairs at our table. Then Dario’s wife Callie sits down too, plus their soon-to-be baby, due on December 25. Our dinner has become a full family gathering before we know it; locals saunter over all evening to say hi, give hugs, boop the kids’ noses. I feel like I’m suddenly a part of a community that I’ve belonged to for 20 years, not 24 hours.
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Back at the Motherlode, we’ve gained the common approach trail and are skirting the base of a yellow-orange swell of stone. Dario proudly plays tour guide, pointing out routes like Swahili Slang (5.12), with a notoriously height-dependent stand-up crux, that a short climber once overcame by climbing with a brick in her chalk bag and then standing on it like a stool. He points out the gnarled, rusted shell of an ancient GMC truck that decades ago was hucked off the top of the Motherlode, and which sits in a heap below the section of cliff that bears its name. We continue into the mouth of one of the most impressive sport-climbing crags I have ever seen: the impossibly steep Madness Cave, 100-plus feet of blackened sandstone, home to routes like Omaha Beach (5.14a) and Forty Ounces of Justice (5.13a).
Dario recommends a stiff warm up on the Undertow Wall, a gently overhung, resistant (what else is new?) 5.11d with sculpted pinches and pockets. I protest a little, then shut up and proceed to punt with a smile on my face. We watch a climber to our left try the area’s classic overhanging jug haul, Chainsaw Massacre (5.12a), with a notoriously tough anchor clip. He pulls up rope to clip then drops it, his legs shake, he breathes a quiet curse, then whips, a joyful scream reverberating through the cave. Dario tries it next and takes the same big fall at the chains. I tie in and fall lower on the route, resting for too long on the rope. By the time I get to the anchor I have regained an unfair amount of strength, so even though I could have clipped, I instead just pull up some rope and jump off with a grin.
As I take the cleanest big whip of my life, and am greeted back on the ground with cackles and fist bumps, I start to realize something that all Red climbers know to be true. This place is magical. These walls house some of the best climbing on the planet: huecos and bucket-jugs, grippy slopers and deep pockets, flaring splitters and underclings galore. And the fact that a single family unit is responsible for the community’s main gathering point: campground, restaurant, showers, apartment block, gear store—hell, every crag-location in the guidebook begins with directions from Miguel’s—is maybe the most fascinating thing of all.
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That Saturday is the restaurant’s fortieth anniversary party. Climbing and Gramicci, the very first climbing-clothing brand Miguel’s stocked eons ago, brought in the rowdy Americana band Widely Grown to perform. There is free beer, free whisky, and, of course, an insane amount of free pizza. I partner up with Mark to sling nearly 2,000 slices to disbelieving dirtbags. The gratitude is real, and the south-easterners’ “appreciate you, sir!” echoes all evening.
Our stock of free pizza eventually runs out, as does the supply of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, and the band starts to rage. I dive into a mosh pit while a screaming crew of a couple hundred stomp to Widely Grown. The lead guitarist James Calleo breaks three strings in the madness. Dario dances onto stage and invites a friend in the crowd up for a game of Whisky Slap. A bottle appears and they take turns wailing on each other, the crowd’s roar increasing with each blow. It’s brutal and shocking and mesmerizing. It’s just another party at Miguel’s.
A foggy hangover permeates the campground the next morning. I make plans with James the guitarist to climb. We head to Phantasia Wall, home to Creature Feature, surely one of the best 5.9s I have ever done, then venture into the sprawling Chocolate Factory, pulling on hueco beauties like Hip to the Jive (5.11b) and Naked (5.12a). James soon heads back to Jersey City and I stick around the campground, stretching in the field, massaging my poor forearms, and alternating between wondering where to climb next, and, of course, what kind of pizza I’d be having for dinner.