Best place to live, surf and climb with a family…

Sam Mwrote:

Townsville has quite good climbing I've heard, but I thought it actually had zero surf? The great barrier reef being a barrier. Are you thinking of the Sunshine Coast area that has Noosa surf, Mt Coolum & Glasshouse Mts for climbing?

I’ve never surfed in Townsville so I can’t say from experience, but the Billabong Pipe Masters has been hosted there.

On the Sunny Coast, there’s a lot of good and varied climbing at Coolum, the Glasshouse Mtns, Brooyar, and at obscure spots in the hinterland. Gold Coast isn’t as good for climbing but it’s not far from Pages Pinnacle and the Scenic Rim crags. Brisbane itself is proximate to all of these areas. 

David Jeffersonwrote:

I’ve never surfed in Townsville so I can’t say from experience, but the Billabong Pipe Masters has been hosted there.

Really are you sure!? I'm going to need a video or article to back that up. If they did that, surely it was a long boat trip out to somewhere on the great barrier reef....or at the artificial wave pool in Yeppoon.

Anyway, for the americans, it seems like southern California is really the only choice.

Sam Mwrote:

Really are you sure!? I'm going to need a video or article to back that up. If they did that, surely it was a long boat trip out to somewhere on the great barrier reef....or at the artificial wave pool in Yeppoon.

Couldn’t find a decent source so must be fake news. In any case, I personally wouldn’t consider Townsville summers to have ‘beautiful weather’ but YMMV. 

 Mission gorge is garbage and everyone knows it. That’s like climbing at a 1 star wall in the valley and saying the valley sucks.

I’d compare it more to only climbing at Trash Can Rock and saying all of Josh sucks. Tried to think of a Valley crag to compare, but came up empty handed. To be fair, MG has some good rock, but the baby’s butt smooth, beach ball slapping moves get old fast, and the urban blight landscape takes it down even lower. 

David Jeffersonwrote:

...the Billabong Pipe Masters has been hosted there.

umm, different event. The Pipe Master is hosted... at Pipeline. Sounds like a nice place though, and cool if they have a WSL event, even if the WSL is bass-ackwards.

Upvote Cape Town - moved here about 2 years ago with my family (3 kids).  Weather is amazing almost all year round.  Cape Town has good Surfing, climbing, Mtn biking, hiking, snorkeling etc…

My kids are members of one of the climbing teams here and are psyched to compete as well as climb outdoors.

Feel free to DM if you have any more specific questions about Cape Town 

How can a 2.5 year old be a "climber".  PSA please do not bring kids under the age of 8 or dogs to popular crags. It is rude and dangerous.  Not fair for them or us who have to be around them. 

It’s ridiculous to say no dogs or kids under 8 at the crag 

This other thread got some mileage: best place to live surf and climb

Maybe you even noticed it, OP, since your thread title matches :)

...

I love San Diego but housing costs have spiraled out of control in recent years. 10 years ago, the median home price was ~ $350K. Today it's ~$900K . (source: California Dept. of Housing & Community Development)

If you got your priorities straight, and instead of purchasing a home for your family to live in, bought totems instead, you could acquire (with $900K investment) more than 10,500 totems at $85 a pop. If you placed one totem every 10 feet and never cleaned a single one, leaving them all behind as some kind of reverse Robin Hood booty giver for needy dirtbags, you would finally run out of totem cams after about 20 miles climbed. I know what I would do with the $$$ !

On the positive side, if you can somehow finagle a home buy in the San Diego area, for example, my home value has quadrupled in 20 years, and 60 years ago, a house like mine sold for less than 1 percent of its current value. It’s an ongoing trend that can make the increasing population a beautiful thing.

Even more beautiful than 10,500 totems.

Kevin Worrallwrote:

On the positive side, if you can somehow finagle a home buy in the San Diego area, for example, my home value has quadrupled in 20 years, and 60 years ago, a house like mine sold for less than 1 percent of its current value. It’s an ongoing trend that can make the increasing population a beautiful thing.

Even more beautiful than 10,500 totems.

That's it, I'm taking my 4 totem cams and avocado toast that I could have spent on a down payment for a home back to the gym, where I am safe from such egregious displays of economic privilege.

Also, personal wealth is an illusion. On a long enough time scale, everyone's net worth goes to zero. Best to spend that time surfing and climbing all that you can.

Also, personal wealth is an illusion. On a long enough time scale, everyone's net worth goes to zero. Best to spend that time surfing and climbing all that you can.

You obviously aren’t under the influence of a wife

Chile and Japan haven’t been mentioned yet. Probably both worth a little digging.

Also Makatea, though you better have a helluva remote job for that one.

Born and raised SoCal surfer (Newport Beach), Cape Town is the answer and it’s not even close when mentioning San Diego/LA/San Francisco.

(Unless you can surf Mavericks like a pro and free climb El Cap routes, then you could make an argument for Bay Area… but for us mere mortals, it’s Cape Town)

Ditch two, keep one an you will be happy.

I lived in Fullerton, OC. what about 1.5-2 hrs to Idyllwild  to climb suicide and Tahquites, about 2-2.5 hrs to JT, 20 mins to newport or huntington beach. and 2hrs to big bear if u ski. The nice thing is we would goto the beach during the day(I don’t surf), and after that we would go night skiing. perfect loc for me.

But that was in the 80’s. I thought traffic  sucked then, I can not imagine how it is now. So times may be longer. But we left for suicide/tahquites at 5am your pretty likely to not have too much traffic, until you decide to come home

What was is it from there, 91 to 10 towards Suicide and JT? That side of those highways were not too bad at that time in the early am.

 I lived in CO for 28 yrs. Lived in ft collins horsetooth for bouldering, a few hrs to vedavoo, and also in Denver and colo springs/woodland park. and as you know boulder,gog,turkey rock,sheepnose. All  still are pretty much the same drive as so.cal unless you live near those climbing areas. So if you want the best climbing in Southern Cal. Pick a place that you can get the best rock. SD climbing just plain sucks at least for me. Maybe good for a workout if you live near there. But I would never drive to get to that destination.

So to better answer your question how many hrs did u drive in CO currently to get to the best rock?  goG is good but  can be very scary. I turned a 5.11 into a 5.12 when the mantle on the crux completely broke off lol. So If your used to 1.5-2.5 hrs, then there u go. Good luck. And btw Yosemite is only 8hrs away. Easy to make a weekend of it.

You say you re willing to go abroad.
South of France ticks all your boxes then.
world class climbing (Verdon and so much more) weather good enough to climb rock year round, beaches, surf.
look somewhere between Nice and Marseilles, not only the immediat coast.
if you re willing to give up on surf and good weather and are ok with a lake beach you will not find many better places on earth than Lausanne. 

Kevin Worrallwrote:I have no heat, and no AC, ever, but, I am a block from Windansea, so you’re half right about needing artificial temperature control, if you live inland, own no down gear, live with a female, and especially if you’re an urbanized gym climber :)

It’s awesome that you are lucky enough to live a block from Windansea, but you gotta keep things in perspective here. I’m in Encinitas and very close to the beach, and even my microclimate is very different than yours. In any case, housing on the coast is super expensive and I just think it’s a little out of touch to be singing the praises of where you live without acknowledging that it might not even be an option for some.

The same thing applies to the surf.. you’ve got breaks that you can walk to on any given morning to check for conditions and crowds and if it looks good, pop a fun little session. The vast majority don’t have that luxury.