Mt. Elden Crags Rock Climbing

Sitting just north of Flagstaff, Mt. Elden is marked by radio towers and a fire watch tower on top and by the large burn scar on it's southeastern and eastern slopes. Composed of Dacite, Mt. Elden has great bouldering, fun cragging, and even a few multiple pitch climbs of good quality. The rock tends to be sharp and rough providing great friction and the perfect Joshua Tree training ground.

Mt. Elden dominates many of the views from town, and as such the daydreams of many local climbers. Home to well established oldschool areas such as West Elden and Secret Canyon, it has in the last decade also brought to town a very unique style of sport climbing. The newer crags like Solitude Canyon, Oakland’s, the Red Dragon, Upper Middle Elden Canyon, and the One Wall boast some truly excellent pitches on priceless formations where a climber can expect to find every sort of hold imaginable.

The areas themselves are spread out across the southern flanks of the mountain with considerable distance in between them. The actual cliff aspects cover every range, so there can be quite a bit of sun/shade searching throughout the seasons and in light winters, climbable all year round. The approaches vary from mild for West Elden to arduous for the higher elevation crags.

Mt. Elden was formed about 50,000 years ago in the course of several months and is technically a lava dome formed of Dacitic lava flows. There was never an explosion, rather an out pouring of flows along lateral vents. Which simply means that the crags we climb on today were once huge flows of lava slowly oozing from the mound. Evidence of these flows can be seen on top of many of crags and elsewhere on the mountain in very cool waves and fins of once flowing lava frozen in time.