Although I live in Canada, I have spent many months in this awesome American National Park, which offers a combination of beautiful scenery, excellent camping, and thousands and thousands of (mostly short) climbing routes. Even better, it is often possible to climb right through the winter (although the camping can be frosty). It can be unpleasantly hot from May-September. The nearest city is Palm Springs, but the park is also just a half-day's drive from Los Angeles and Las

I was lucky enough to get the chance to visit this area in central Arizona at the end of February, when the weather elsewhere still felt like winter. The mountains and canyons just east of Phoenix harbour a bunch of climbing sites, including tons of bouldering around Oak Flat, several popular sport climbing areas, and even some trad, multi-pitch and tower climbing. The rock quality varies, but in general is a soft, flaky tuff, with varying amounts of a harder dark brown varni

Cookie Monster 5.7 in Pine Creek Canyon It seems like every time I start prepping for a trip to the American southwest, I spend hours thumbing through guidebooks, and I always come back to the Red Rock Canyon guidebook and the many excellent long trad routes. Red Rocks is an extremely scenic and popular area with thousands of amazing climbing routes. If climbing there, please remember this is a sensitive desert wilderness area. Don't camp out in the canyons, keep noise and l

I was very pleased to take advantage of some of the warm weather last week to visit this scenic forest park in Quebec a little northeast...