Big Cottonwood Canyon

A road trip is perfect in SLC. The climbing (and skiing, from what i hear) is superb. It's also a nice place to live if you (a) are an ultra conservative right wing nutcase (b) just want to climb and don't care about the environment, politics, lack of work/livable wages, lack of a good drink at a decent price, repressive culture, etc., but don't knock the climbing.

Despite the prevalent population base, Utah is surpassed by very few in terms of rock climbing. A road trip to Utah, or Salt Lake City should not be avoided because of an assumed run in with religious locals or political ideology. If you purposely schedule a road trip away from Utah for this reason, you are ignorant. The fact is Salt Lake City and surrounding areas are home to beautiful granite cracks, and tendon popping boulder problems in Little Cottonwood Canyon, challenging and scenic quartzite routes, pro and bolted, in Big Cottonwood. There are complex sandstone boulder problems in Joes Valley, phenomenal and isolated routes and bouldering at Ibex, pocketed limestone in American Fork and pristine, fun, and challenging limestone in the scenic Logan Canyon, a definite must. Give it a try, but don't knock it till you have tried it.

Matt Stephens

I agree. I dont think anyone should move to SLC or stop on a road trip to climb. That way I can continue to climb on some of the best routes in the world and not have to wait in line or worry about crowds.

Lack of work and livable wages? Are you serious? You must not look too hard for a job, cause 20,000 people a year move to utah for work. There is tons of work, cheap cost of living, terribly bloating 3.2 beer, and a CRAPLOAOD of climbing, of all types. But oh yeah, the people, and the crowds, and the politics....ya'll best just stay away, you'll hate it for sure.

I explored and climbed most of the crags from 5-3 to 5-11 + in Salt Lake for a full 10 years. During that time I had the best climbing days of my life in Big Cottonwood Canyon, meeting and climbing with some of the great old timers like Jerry Stovall, Stan Cantrell, Merrill Bitter, Gordon Douglass, Bobbie Bensmen and others.

They were great times, and the routes are some of the best juggy nobby quartzite sport and trad routes you can imagine, all in a beautiful accessible location.

You can't beat Big Cottonwood in this lowly climbers opinion.

Actually, you should stay away from SLC if you are a religious bigot. The Mormons are nice and the climbing is spectacular.

WARNING! A person or persons has chopped the routes at Geezer Wall!!! At this point do not waist your time going up to climb at this crag. I am going to hike up and assess the damage done by the culprits this afternoon.

If anyone knows the individuals that went to the trouble to KILL this crag we'd like to have a discussion on why such a harsh measure was taken to KILL a little gem that had a host of SAFE sport and mixed routes for the 5.5 to easy 5.10 leader. To put it bluntly, you people are anti-climbing community and ought to quit climbing. The amount of effort (with significant cost) to put up these routes FOR THE SLC CLIMBING COMMUNITY and beyond, and the quality and well thought out nature of the routes, did not justify KILLING THE CRAG.

It's in the hands of all you climbers out there if you feel this was justified fine, call the Geezer Wall dead. If you feel this action was unnecessary and want the routes to go back up come together and make it happen prove to those freaks that did the deed this is uncalled for, will not be tolerated and unacceptable in this climbing community. Thanks for the support!

Localism sucks and like on the coast, those that adopt this elitist mentality need to be called out and punished. Banishment from climbing in the central Wasatch is the minimum these individuals need to receive: Yeah I'm really irked about this BS.