Red Rocks – It IS Red and there ARE Rocks in It!
Red Rocks is a justifiably world-renowned destination climbing area, and contrary to the quirky 1980s cider ad by Leslie Nielsen, it IS red and there ARE rocks in it! The […]
Category Archives: South West
White Stone around Red Rocks
Las Vegas is an extraordinary story of city-building. Fuelled by tolerant gambling regulations, and the construction of the Hoover Dam, the population of 5,000 in the early 30s, has grown […]
St George – Sandstone and Basalt
St George, Utah, lies about a hundred miles east of Las Vegas, Nevada, but by a strange quirk of boundaries, it’s two States away, with the I15 nipping through a […]
Mojave Limestone and The Grail a.k.a. Lime Kiln Canyon
Whilst Las Vegas is famed for Red Rocks, and Southern Utah for Moab and Indian Creek, between these two sandstone Meccas lies a tremendous wealth of less well-known climbing – […]
Sin City – Too Hot to Handle
Las Vegas is a pretty logical start/end point for our West Coast road trip – not least because there’s a direct flight (outbound at least) from Manchester. Red Rocks is […]
Flagstaff – from The Peaks to The Pit
There’s a tonne of climbing around Flagstaff, the epicentre of the North Arizona scene. Our previous attempt to explore some of it, at the same time of year almost twenty […]
Canyons Broad and Narrow
The cold snap in Moab gave us the nudge to join the great snowbird migration south to warmer climes (and climbs) so we set the sat nav for Arizona. First […]
The Box and Mentmore
The Box is a box canyon of rhyolite, near the town of Socorro with about 300 routes – mostly sport. The contrast of the red/brown rock and bullet blue sky […]
Palomas Peak and Pecos
Pecos River Canyon, about half an hour north of Santa Fe, gets a name check in the title of the Jemez Rock guide and sounded worth checking out. It’s a […]
Diablo Canyon and White Rock – Light and Shadow
White Rock is the overspill dormer town for its much more famous neighbour, Los Alamos. This incongruous outpost of the US Department of Energy brings Silicon Valley shininess to the […]
Jemez Mountains
The Jemez Mountains lie to the west of Los Alamos and offer a great range of accessible, high altitude cragging in some stunning locations. We started our exploration to the […]
El Rito – Cobbles!
El Rito is one of New Mexico’s premier sports venues, and unique in the State being composed of conglomerate. Regular Rockaroundtheworld readers will know we have a fondness for a […]
Taos Part Two – Red River, John Dunn Bridge and Tres Piedras
North of Taos you get into skiing country, though it’s hard to imagine with temperatures still nudging 30 at the end of September at almost 9,000ft. We headed to the […]
New Mexico Road Trip – First Stop Taos
With direct flights from UK to USA in short supply post-covid, we launched our tour of the SW States in Houston, Texas. On arrival it was tempting to say “… […]
ROCKAROUNDTHEWORLD RETROSPECTIVE – THE 2004-5 BIG TRIP PART 4: The Four Corners – exploring the SW USA Deserts
If you missed the first three installments of our Big Trip Retrospective, you can follow our blast around Eastern Europe and Scandinavia here: Europe , our trip across the Rockies here: Rockies and […]
Canyons of Contrast – Homeward Bound
Having taken a solemn pledge to chill and enjoy the last couple of days of our trip, we set about constructing an itinerary that would take in some decent climbing […]
Primrose Dihedral, Moses
Primrose Dihedral had been on my radar as perhaps THE must-do Desert Tower, ever since reports of ascents in the 90s from returning conquering heroes, including Martin, Mike and John. […]
Castleton Tower
There’s quite a lot of concern in the desert climbing community about climbing on sandstone after rain – it’s a fragile rock, and gets significantly weaker when wet, when especially […]
Ancient Art, Fisher Towers
After fleeing a rain-lashed Zion, we headed east towards Moab for the second phase of the adventure. A small detour gave us the opportunity to get even more value for […]
Prodigal Sun
Prodigal Sun was the other Wall on our shortlist for Zion adventure, and it had been a coin flip that meant we set our sights on Moonlight Buttress first (directissima […]
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