One hour from all types of greatness

Price wrote:How about Jackson Hole?

Only move to Jackson if you are a skier first, and climber second. Outside of the alpine adventures, there is very little to keep a pure rock climber busy around here. Sure we have a handful of great rock routes in the Tetons, but the season is short and once you've done each of them a handful of times you are out of luck.

Lander is a 3 hour drive, and the City of Rocks a 4 hour drive. Both are awesome, but as someone with a young family making trips out there is generally not too practical.

Of course, the skiing is awesome.

Fortunately we have a great gym: enclosureclimbing.com but maybe I'm biased :)

For Grand Junction you forgot.

Black Canyon South Rim 1.3 hours
Black Canyon North Rim 1.5 Hours
Fisher towers 45 min.
Castle Valley 45 min
Unaweep Canyon 20 min
Gatway (Endless untouched multipitch sandstone) 1 hour
Mill Creek 1.45 hour
Paradox valley & 16Z 2 hour
Dinasour National Momument 2 Hour
The Swell North and South 2 hours
Escalante Canyon (a more adventureous Indian Creek) .45 hours
Ophir Wall (the Hidden Gem of Colorado) 2.5 hours
Parachete (ice) 1 hour
Telluride (ice) 2.5 hour
Redstone (ice) 1.5 hours
Glenwood canyon (ICE & ROCK) 1.3 hours

Gunnison river put ins 1.3 - 2 hours.
Taylor canyon 2.5 hours
San Juan 1 hours
Yampa - gates of Lador 2 hours
Green River 2 1.75 hours
Flaming Gorge resovoir (DWS) 2.75 hours

Paonia (sick BC skiing) 1 hour
Marble (sick BC skiing) 1.45 hours

Not to mention the world class mountain biking & dirt biking here in the valley. Oh and man you haven't even seen personel armorys till you've got shooting around here. Were gun nuts.

Pretty much Put a dot on grand junction on the map and draw a two hour circle around it and see what you got. This place is just plain SICK recreationaly. There are place to go North, South, East, and West.

I like glenwood a lot too, because it's cooler in the summer and a little closer to better skiing, but your not buying anything decent anywhere near the roaring fork vally without serious cash. I own nice property's here in junction, and i am still able to max out my 401K

What's the local climbing community like in Grand Junction?

Price wrote: Really?? 'Rado: It's as easy to get 8% beer in Utah as it is in Rado.

Yeah we have 3.2 beer at the grocery and convenience stores but you can still get a real beer at a non-state run liquor store, bar (not private club) and any restaurant. You can also get a double, something you can’t there. I don’t drink much but when I do I don’t want to deal with a bunch of state BS. You can’t even by a cold six pack there; you have to buy warm individuals. Oh and Sundays, forget about it.

Uh, we don't have private clubs in Utah.

I think the Tahoe area has all those things plus.

Andrew C wrote:Seattle, WA Rock: Squamish, Index, Gold Bar, Leavenworth, Vantage, Spokane (all within 1 to 3 hours away) Very high quality climbing. Ski: Stevens Pass, Snoqualmi Pass, Whistler, Mission Ridge Ice/mounaineering: Cascades, Olympic Mts, Victoria Island Rafting: Tons thanks to glacial melt I'm honestly thinking about going back, It's starting to win over Colorado in my mind.

It already beat CO in mine! We'd like to move back.

grayhghost wrote:Uh, we don't have private clubs in Utah.

Shh...I thought we weren't telling people that yet.

Tristan, it depends on how you look at it. There's plenty of folks that climb. I have folks to go with and we get out, and usually when we do were all alone. I guess I promote it because we need a bit more of one, to really pop the cap on this place. Grand Junction is rapidly growning out of that cuturally retarted mindset that the rest of Colorado puts it in. We have all the resourses just not the "Vibe" you might say. Availability of recreation, smog, traffic, and population density, ect. were always more importaint to me so it never was really and issue.

Just curious, are you on a tight schedule? Have plenty of beer cans. Toss and shoot. More sporting with a .22 rifle takes a bit longer to bring it up than the a side arm.

Sacramento, CA - Truckeee, CA or Reno, NV

Great rivers to be found in northern CA. Good climbing,world class skiing,hunting and there has to be ice up near Donners Summit with a quck jaunt down to Lee Vining only a few hours away.

You've got lakes too for wind surfing or other water sports if you're interested in something other than whitewater.

~Susan

edit: Both Reno & Sac have international airports which if you plan on traveling much is very nice. Driving 4 hours to jump a plane is no fun and can seriously impact your travel plans.

I agree with Airbiscuit, I kayak more than climb now but the climbing community has been good. The rafting community here is big and the kayak community is growing pretty fast. We’re currently getting a kayak club going, well it’s more of an expansion of a Front Range club but we’re holding more events on the West Slope and Eastern Utah. As far as getting outside, during the summer there’s enough time after work to boulder in town or climb in the monument, you can even do town runs on the river (not class III or anything but for an after work run…). Right now we have kayak pool sessions at the college every Monday till May. We don’t get a ton of snow (in the Valley) and it usually melts off pretty fast so you can climb and mountain bike pretty much year round. My wife and I are about the only two here that don’t own guns but I hear from the guys at work that there is a trap club and several shooting ranges. I’ve heard the Valley runs out of ammo from time to time but we are getting a Cabelas in May so that probably won’t be a problem soon.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention Unaweep, good call. Enough unexplored bouldering for a lifetime and good mutipitch on ancient granite farther down the canyon.

I'd go for Salt Lake. Beer isn't quite as easy to come by and it is a huge bummer that you can't get strong beer on tap unless you homebrew, but otherwise it is mostly a nonissue. It blows everywhere but Jackson Hole out of the water for skiing, has very good year round rock climbing, good ice climbing, and its really centrally located so you are a day away from Colorado, Vegas, California, etc.

The whitewater scene isn't great for rafting in a 1 hour radius. If you kayak, there are a couple of fun runs on the Provo and Weber and some hair runs in the Cottonwoods and a few other canyons, but there just isn't enough water to make it very high quality. If you bump the radius to 4 hours, things really look up. There are nice easy class 3 day runs on the Colorado(Moab daily) and the Green River(Green River daily, split mountain out of dinosaur). There are very nice overnighters on the Colorado(Ruby Horsethief class II and great hiking - and Westwater class III/IV), Green(Flaming Gorge class III with awesome fishing, Labyrinth Canyon class I). You are also in the heart of long desert rivers and near Idaho - Cataract, Desolation, Lodore, Yampa, and the San Juan are close. Finally, there are some really neat backpacking style IK trips like the Escalante, Dirty Devil, and the Zion narrows.

If jobs weren't an issue, i'd be in Durango in a heartbeat though.

+1 for New Hampshire. 45 minutes or less to world class everything for me. As for the weather, keep an open mind and never trust the forecast.