Calanques – La Grande Candelle
The perils of a December mini-break in the south of France were highlighted when a huge band of rain swept across the country on the first full day of our […]
Texas – Hueco Tanks, Big Bend, Enchanted Rock and Reimer’s Ranch
With just over a week to go before our plane home we faced the potentially dull prospect of driving a thousand miles across Texas. The first leg of our trip […]
Tucson – Mt Lemmon and The Farmhouse
Despite being in southern Arizona, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, Tucson can lay claim to being a year-round climbing paradise. The secret to this seeming climactic contradiction is […]
Winslow to Phoenix
If Flagstaff’s claim to fame is a name-check in “Route 66” then it’s near neighbour to the east, Winslow, can thank The Eagles for its notoriety (and perhaps its continued […]
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 […]
Up The Creek with Too Few Cams, and More Moab
We’ve been lucky enough to visit most of the iconic American climbing areas, and many others that should be more widely known – have a browse through here if you […]
Utah – La Sal Mountains and Colorado River Road
Utah is king of the desert – at least in terms of stupendous sandstone geology. Arizona might boast The Grand Canyon, but Utah lays claim to Bryce, Zion, Canyonlands and […]
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 “… […]
Big Top – Aonach Dubh
Looking to continue our 4* tour around Craigallan (our 4* base in the Rucksack Club hut at Ballachulish) we settled on Big Top on the west face of Aonach Dubh. […]
The Bullroar – Buzzing and Basking on The Ben
With one of those rare Fort Bill bluebird days in prospect, the only logical destination was The Ben. Having exhausted the Hard Rock opportunities, we narrowed our focus to some […]
Swastika Ticked!
An otherwise highly successful trip last year, to tick off some of the remaining routes on my Hard Rock to-do list, ended on a frustrating note. Having done … and […]
Communication Breakdown in the Land of Steepness and Looseness
There’s a mythical sun-kissed world, way out west, where the land meets the sea in a twisted mess of verticality and fragility: The Land of Steepness and Looseness a.k.a. Gogarth’s […]
Naranjo de Bulnes or Picu Urriellu
Our (or rather “my” if I’m honest) rather ambitious agenda for this Paroi de Légende trip came in two parts: 1) aiming to bag three 1,000ft plus EDs on three […]
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