When Mike Deime booked a cliff-mounted rental in the Red River Gorge, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Hanging from the side of a sandstone face, Cliff Dweller required the ascent of 177 steps from the ground to the bedroom, 45 steps to the kitchen, and 11 more to reach the roof deck for a panoramic view of the Gorge. But when Deime woke up to a “winter wonderland” on Feb. 1, it was worth every step.
“I felt like a little kid all over again—an adult staying up in a treehouse,” Deime said. “It’s an incredible concept … I’ve been all over, and there’s nothing like this in Kentucky. It’s one of the top five coolest things to do.”
Cliff Dweller is one of eight treehouse rentals offered by Canopy Crew, a rental and tree service company based in the Red River Gorge and Cincinnati. For owner Django Kroner, the treehouses are like childhood daydreams brought to life. Using bird’s-eye views, sustainable building methods, and thoughtful amenities, the treehouses bring guests closer to nature and, Kroner hopes, a renewed sense of adventure.
“All the things you imagine as a kid you slowly forget when you become an adult,” Kroner said. “Part of the goal is to make people rekindle some of those exciting things in their imaginations that have been asleep for a long time.”
The 30-year-old Kroner has been deeply invested in the outdoors—and the Red River Gorge in particular—for most of his adult life. He moved to the Gorge at 19 with the goal of rock climbing as much as possible.
“I had just graduated from NOLS [the National Outdoor Leadership School] and had a fresh sense of confidence in the wilderness and was thirsty for more experiences,” Kroner said. “Rock climbing was a way I knew how to have the most amount of fun outside.”
To finance his life outdoors, Kroner took a job with a family friend, Aaron Dourson, who hired him to build cabins for the Dourson family’s cabin rental service, Red River Gorgeous. For his first six months in the Gorge, Kroner lived in a tent. Soon, though, he wanted a living space that offered more protection while still preserving a direct connection with nature. Kroner found his solution by building a treehouse—a simple platform 45 feet off the ground.
Kroner lived in his treehouse, experiencing all types of weather conditions, for three years. For the first year, the treehouse was just a platform. The next year, he added a roof but no walls that would create a barrier to the outdoors.
“There are those little moments, like when you’re cooking or just waking up or changing clothes, and you go, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m in a giant plant,’ ” Kroner said. “It’s like the tree is cradling you. It is supporting you. It is holding you up. You are its guest. There’s something about that that’s really charming to me. You have this relationship with this massive plant. It’s a Jack and the Beanstalk feeling.”
Gee Mensah
Red River Gorgeous now manages the treehouses created by Canopy Crew, and Dourson said guests have responded positively to the unique experience.
“People really appreciate the creativity that [Kroner] puts into the construction as well as the experience of being off the ground,” Dourson said. “Being in the tree top and swaying with the tree is a totally fresh perspective that people really enjoy.”
Kroner had no plans to start a business when he first moved to the Gorge or even when he built his first treehouse. Instead, the idea grew little by little as his relationship with the outdoors matured. As he gradually checked off his list of climbing goals, Kroner began to feel restless.
“That got the gears turning about what’s next and ultimately led to me coming up with the concept for Canopy Crew,” he said.
Canopy Crew was never about the bottom line—the idea was sparked by Kroner’s desire to build. Just as construction funded his rock-climbing passion, starting a company was a means to an end.
“I had a bunch of ideas of treehouses I wanted to build, and it made sense to get other people to pay for them,” Kroner said.
In addition to drawing on his carpentry background, Kroner completed internships with arborists in Cincinnati, his hometown, and started a tree service. Today, the business incorporates both elements—the Cincinnati-based tree service salvages wood that is repurposed for interior elements of the treehouses in the Red River Gorge.
Since the company’s founding in 2013, Kroner has assembled a team of builders who can accomplish increasingly sophisticated projects—Cliff Dweller being the most recent example of innovative construction.
Kroner is careful to ensure that his structures don’t damage the trees. The key, he said, is to be sensitive with design and execution from the very beginning.
“Trees are vascular beings,” he said. “The vascular tissue is in the cambium layer just under the bark. It’s kind of similar to your arm. If you tied a rope around your arm, it would be dead in a couple of days. A tree is the same way. If you constrict around the tree or wrap it, it will cut off the vascular flow and kill the tree. But you can insert a bolt and access the structural integrity of the heartwood, which is essentially dead wood, and limit your impact on the cambium layer. The tree will actually seal off the tissue around that hole you’ve made.”
Kroner’s construction process makes as few penetrations as possible, using heavy-duty bolts that support the weight of the structure. The result is a safe, non-destructive way to interact with life in the tree canopy.
“It’s been proven, for 30 years and thousands of treehouses, that it works,” Kroner said, referring to the broader treehouse building industry. “We do use dynamic attachments. The brackets that attach to those bolts allow the tree to sway in the wind and allow the tree to grow and get wider.”
Forest Woodward
Kroner’s attention to detail pays off for guests seeking a one-of-a-kind stay at the Gorge. Michelle Vest, visiting from West Virginia, was looking for something other than a typical cabin-in-the-woods getaway. After a stay in Turtle Dome, she’s a believer in treetop lodging.
“It was a truly unique experience and like nothing I had ever stayed in before,” Vest said. “The dome itself brings nature to you even while inside, with an open view of the trees. I loved waking up and being able to see out of the dome because it gave the feeling of sleeping under the stars.”
Vest, who runs a Hurricane, West Virginia-based boutique called Contagious, has one piece of advice: pack lightly.
“Don’t pack like me and bring everything you own … or you won’t enjoy the journey to the top. But just remember that the view from the top is always worth the climb,” she said. ️
A sense of wonder and connection to nature are exactly what Kroner hopes to achieve through his treehouses—and what he, too, experiences in the canopy.
“I like getting to know a tree,” Kroner said. “Learning how the light looks when it’s filtered through the leaves at different times of the year. How each limb moves differently in the wind. Its different personalities—what is it like up there in a storm or the fall or the winter? There’s an intimacy you get only by spending a ton of time in a place … It’s the level of connectedness with the forest around you.”