UKC

Any suggestions welcome on best place for an April climbing trip outside the UK. Ideally looking for an area with a good range of routes either trad or sport (or both).

Trad up to around E2
Sport in the 6's
Multipitch or a mixture of single and multi pitch
With a decent town nearby

Between us we have been on a lot of climbing trips but looking for a little inspiration and to know where is good at this time of year.

In reply to arose:

If you fancy something adventurous, Morocco? I've not been but I hear it's good that time of year.

In reply to arose:

Red Rocks


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!!!!!!!!

In reply to arose:

What Robert said, and/or Moab area, Utah.

In reply to arose:
Maybe a bit far?
Arapiles. Best time of the year there. Least amount of rain and not to hot.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I've actually done three month long trips to Red Rocks and totally agree with your assessment though I was always there in october / November time. I've dont most of what I want to there with Rock Warrior being the stand out route.

In reply to sean1:

Hmmm. I was hoping for European suggestions. I have been to Arapiles a long time ago and again it is pretty awesome not sure if I would agree on Natimuk being a town!

In reply to arose:

Went to Riglos in March, and had great conditions (but we were very lucky, it was snowing when we arrived, pissing down when we left, and sunny in between). Bolted multipitch on huge conglomerate towers - you can do trad there if you like, but I wouldn't bother (I'd expect it to be overly adventurous, i.e. utterly loose).

Riglos is amazing: really convenient with the refugio in the village 10min from the crags, really fun climbing, scenically incredible, and has massive vultures flying around you the whole time. Very cool and cheap too. You could also go elsewhere in Catalonia etc for a longer trip or to catch better weather.

Check out the destination article on here if you don't know much about the place.

In reply to arose:

How about Pfalz? Great sandstone towers, basically trad with a very few bolts strewn in) in southwest Germany. Good time of the year to go there, not too hot.

Otherwise, Mallorca, South of France, Siurana, Kalymnos, Sicily and Geyikbayiri are in prime conditions then (with the last one maybe being a bit too hot).

In reply to arose:

Suprised you can run out of routes so soon at Red Rocks... have you done much at Joshua Tree? Small place but Palm Springs is just down the road. Another possibility is Suicide and the sunnier bits of Tahquitz... Idylwild is a lovely place.

In reply to arose:
hope I'm not late to the party but I've been working on a little side project website that I built specifically for questions like this.

https://www.climbcation.com is the site and it's essentially a filter for world class crags that I'm hoping is easy to use for discovering options. Currently it has 110 destinations and covers a great deal of crags worth making a trip out to.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

PS: admins-- I believe this post follows the forum rules as it is not meant to compete with ukclimbing.com nor does it have any adverts(currently it's just a fun side project for me, doesn't have any means for making money). Please let me know if I'm breaking the rules.

In reply to Offwidth:


Agree about Suicide and Tahquitz - superb climbing. But Idylwild! A cheesy bit of fake chocolate box Switzerland with nice view of the LA smog.......

In reply to Robert Durran:

Beyond the tourist tat there is one of the friendliest climbing shops anywhere (we spent nearly a day there once when it rained ... wonder if local hero Clark is still OK and camped out back) .. plenty of good people (we got a dinner invite from the, crag and a small party iat the top of a route) ... some lovely cafes, restaurants and bars (including one with wine samplers) no big chain food joints at all. You really are a miserable bugger if you, don't like the place.

In reply to dsauerbrun:

Not too late at all. Have had a look at your website - nice idea though it does seem very "heavy" as it struggles to load on my connection. To be fair I am currently living somewhere with terrible internet but am really struggling with your site (I also had a warning about a security certificate not being present). As soon as I click on any of the criteria the site tries to start searching rather than letting me select all criteria. it has come up with some good suggestions to get my thoughts going.

I did notice that if I put in February - March for iceclimbing that Ben Nevis doesn't come up - maybe I'll have to enter that one myself (my usual local crag!)

now if you could just create a site that will select where is going to have the best Scottish winter conditions for any day of the year!

Cheers

In reply to arose:

For multipitch sport, plus some trad, Le Gorge de la Jonte is fab. It's not roadside but really good. Le Boffi nearby has some fabulous 6c's. Millau is not too far away.

In reply to DDDD:
Paklenica in Croatia should be warming up by then - ticks all the climbing boxes, town has all you need.

In reply to arose:

thanks for checking it out. It does pretty well on 4mbit connections which is pretty slow. At this point I think adding locations and features is more important than making it more lightweight(it's just a side project for me so I've got a lot on the to do list haha).

Thanks for the feedback on the searching issue, it is working as intended but it is very annoying and is on the list.

As for Ben Nevis, that location isn't in the database yet; if you think it's a world class ice climbing destination I'd love if you added it! FYI: I don't have ice climbing grades added yet, I'm in the process of allowing multiple grade types(IE. squamish should have a bouldering grade, trad grade, and sport grade) but it is the next thing on my to-do list.

Any other feedback would be greatly appreciated! Complaints are more useful than "I love it!" comments to me at the moment haha