As a parent of three young children, I’ll state the obvious: the most convenient place to climb with your kids is probably the gym. That’s because it ticks all those mission-critical, family-friendly boxes:
1) Short approach: Kids have short legs and short attention spans. You don’t want to find out halfway through an approach that they’re not psyched anymore, though you probably will.
2) A high density of routes at various grades: This lets everyone in the family find climbs with the appropriate challenge without moving around a bunch (see criterion No. 1).
3) A flat staging area: Kids are good at wandering away and homing in on hazards like dropoffs; a flat, secure, open staging area minimizes these potentialities.
4) Zero to minimal rockfall: Even with a helmet on, kids are still more susceptible to rockfall injury, being smaller than any falling object and less situationally aware.
5) Overall safe climbing: Toproping, bouldering, and sport climbing are the safest, most family-friendly, easiest-to-teach genres.
However, kids also like being outside just as much as adults, which is why we are so blessed in the U.S. to have outdoor venues that offer all the above, reliable seasonal weather, and good camping/stayover options, two other key ingredients in a successful family climbing trip.
When devising this list, a final consideration was a little less tangible, but it’s important nonetheless: scenery. Kids like being in pretty places with lots of nature to appreciate, explore, and play in when they aren’t climbing. Keeping them occupied this way also helps you climb more, since your children will be happy—and not bored and antsy—down on the ground. So, we’ve excluded highway-side crags that, though they might have micro approaches or lots of routes, are unpleasant hangs that your kiddos will hate (cue whining in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…).
Rifle is the original roadside limestone sport crag, with tempting streaked walls visible from your car—and some, like the Project Wall and the Arsenal, that you can park directly beneath. While the first main wave of routes, starting in the early 1990s, was mostly 5.12 on up, development in the past 20 years has brought more moderates. Among the canyon’s 500 climbs, you can now find 80 from 5.10d to 5.8 at family-friendly venues like the Ice Caves, the Dirty Wall, and the Canine Wall, where the climbs tackle cool features like layback corners and slabs, with a touch of Rifle’s ubiquitous polish and big, fun pockets.
The canyon is also fun for kids to explore, from the Ice Caves that hold ice well into early summer to the stream, with its clear, magical swimming holes. Generations have grown up here, with the toddlers of yesteryear, like Matty Hong, putting up today’s 5.14+ test pieces. The major caveat is rockfall: Rife can be chossy, with spontaneous rockfall in spring during the freeze-thaw and off the clifftops after big rains. Keep your kids helmeted, away from rockfall zones, and out of the road.
Pros: Zero approach (you can literally park under some crags); convenient mountain camping; high density of routes from 5.8 to 5.14+
Cons: Crowded on weekends in peak season, when parking/finding a campsite can be tough; some choss and rockfall; polished, cryptic climbing
Season: Late spring, summer, autumn
Ten Sleep, Wyoming, is the most fun pocket venue in America, with smooth tan, gray, golden, and white Dolomite painted by eye-catching water streaks. The routes are well-protected, the pockets are deep, the crimps are plentiful, and the scenery is without peer, especially at the upper areas like Mondo Beyondo, Lake Point, and the Ark, where you get expansive vistas of the evergreen-lined canyon and the high desert beyond.
Summer is a delight, with cool temps at higher cliffs like Crag 6, which sits at 9,500 feet amidst the rolling plateaus of the Big Horn Mountains. Ten Sleep also has some of the best kid-friendly 5.9–5.10s around—for instance, the 5.10b gently overhanging pocket-haul Euro Trash at Sector Shinto, or the pink- and black-streaked 5.9/10- slabs at the Waterfall Walls. Approaches can be a little longer—typically in the 15- to 30-minute range—but the hikes are pretty, elevation gain is minimal, and the staging areas are chill forest hangs. Ten Sleep is also a great place for kid crushers, who may gravitate to the small pockets, as a 12-year-old Bayes Wilder did on the fearsome James Litz testpiece General Litzenheimer (5.14c) at the French Cattle Ranch in summer 2023.
Pros: A lot of routes—1,500-plus from 5.9 to 5.14—on nearly perfect limestone; cool summer temps; free dispersed camping in the national forest; fun rest-day activities like chilling at the lake and exploring the Big Horns
Cons: Crags can be busy; slightly longer approaches at altitude
Season: Late spring, summer, early autumn
Suppose you’re seeking an all-inclusive resort experience. In that case, Crawdad Canyon is it: a privately owned canyon/spring/basalt crag west of St. George, Utah, in which your $16 day pass gets you climbing, pickleball (for you hipsters), a spring-fed pool, crawdad catching along the creek (for you junior hipsters), and hiking, with camp opportunities, park your RV, or stay in a renovated farmhouse.
The dark basalt offers 234 routes from 5.6 to 5.13, all bolt-protected (even the cracks) and with identifying plaques and a good mixture of grades. The canyon is a lush, shady oasis, making it a good option in summer, especially when you throw in the pool in the eyesight of the Flytrap crag. (Approach beta: “From the snack bar, walk past the pool. It’s probably less than 50 yards.”) No climb is taller than 85 feet, nothing super-hard, and the area has been criticized for its “fluid” ethics, but, hey, it’s basically an outdoor gym, and your kids will dig it.
Pros: The resort offers myriad activities—including climbing—an oasis-like setting, and a high concentration of well-protected routes with a minimal approach
Cons: Somewhat pricey at $16/person/day; not much upper-end climbing
Season: Spring, summer, autumn
Hueco Tanks is the proverbial rock garden, three complex stone mountains riddled with corridors, grottoes, caves, slabs, slots, and the ubiquitous huecos—Spanish for “hollows.” Thousands of legendary problems from V0 jug ladders to V15 tip-shredders climb the steep, featured syenite porphyry, with myriad options for the bouldering family, given the sheer density. One zone alone, the Dragon’s Den/Warm-Up Roof/Kid’s Stuff wall, has dozens of problems, from V1 warm-ups on hand-swallowing huecos to V15 iron-rock crimping testpieces.
Since 1998, Hueco has been under a management plan that limits access to East and West mountains to guided tours, though you can freely explore North Mountain, which also has great moderate sport climbing. Only 70 people per day are permitted on North, though you can reserve your slot three months in advance, which is great for families who like to plan. Kids will love the gymnastic movement—problems like the famous North Mountain V2 Nobody Here Gets Out Alive are basically monkey bars—plus the scrambling and exploring. Have them keep an eye out for rock art: Hueco is famed for its 200-plus bright, colorful mask pictographs left by the Jornada Mogollon people, who lived here from 600 to 1450 AD.
Pros: Hundreds of four-star problems from V0 to V15 on unique, fused volcanic rock; warm, sunny, and dry in winter; good camping in the park or at the Hueco Rock Ranch or Hueco Mountain Hut; unique microcosm of flora and fauna
Cons: Regulations can be cumbersome; some complex approaches over rock slabs; complex landings on boulders, slabs, and desert hardpan
Season: Late fall, winter, early spring
Home of the famous endurance climbing event/party, 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell, Horseshoe Canyon Ranch (HCR), features a dizzying array of fun, athletic, charismatic sandstone bouldering, trad, and sport climbing, with top quality in every genre, all clustered in a bucolic 640 acres of Ozark Mountains ranchland. HCR is basically one-stop shopping for whatever genre, with short approaches, sport and trad routes from 5.4 to 5.14a, and boulders from VB to V14. Plus, you can camp right in the park or get a cabin.
Horseshoe’s sandstone offers some of the States’ best moderate, family-friendly sport, with iron-rock horns and terra cotta jug plates that scream, “Climb me!” Routes like Green Goblin at the North Forty epitomize this style and see constant traffic, so drop your rope bag and get in line. While the ranch is somewhat isolated, there are still fun rest-day activities like horseback riding, zip lining, walking around, checking out the free-roaming farm animals and working dogs, and hiking and boating opportunities in and around the pristine Upper Buffalo River.
Pros: High density of awesome sport, bouldering, and trad; featured rock is very kid- and beginner-friendly; wide range of grades, with micro-classics at every rating
Cons: Busy on weekends; somewhat isolated
Season: Fall, spring
The Red may just be the king of all family-friendly climbing areas, not only for the mild approaches, fairy-tale forest, and thousands of climbs but for the trademark deep, incut, grippy holds on steep Corbin sandstone that make for natural, simian movement—at every grade. You can haul your way up perfect hand-swallower pockets and dinner plates on the über-popular 5.10a Plate Tectonics, but turn that same wall 70 degrees to create a huge roof and suddenly you have a 5.11+ jug haul like Starry Night or—if you round the holds off—a 5.12+ testpiece like Phantasia.
The Red is vast, with entire zones—the PMRP, Bald Rock, Miller Fork, Muir Valley, etc.—laden with crags, and each crag is broken into sectors. You’ll find moderates and cutting-edge climbs side by side, like at the Chocolate Factory, where the sought-after 5.10s Oompa and Loompa are spitting distance from the sought-after 5.14c Pure Imagination. The staging areas are generally friendly, with the main hazard being copperheads, which hang out in cliff-base rock piles.
Pros: North America’s best and most extensive sport climbing, with scores of classics at every angle and grade; short approaches; fun rest-day hiking to see sandstone arches in Daniel Boone National Forest; plentiful lodging and camping
Cons: Epic-busy during peak season (ahem, Drive-By Crag); weather can be unpredictable, with long damp spells when the rock beads up with dew and becomes unclimbable
Season: Fall, warmer days in winter, spring
New England is not really known as a bolt-clipping mecca, though it does have great singular crags and historic traddy venues like the Gunks and Cathedral Ledge. But Rumney, with 660-plus sport climbs from 5.3 up to 5.15a (out of the area’s 1,140 total sport routes, trad routes, and boulder problems), bucks this trend, offering a proper destination area on compact, swirly schist that’s some of the best rock on Earth. It’s situated amongst classic New England scenery on the rounded dome of Rattlesnake Mountain, with postcard-perfect autumn color and epic views of the valley below.
The climbing here can be short, fierce, and sequential—we’ve all seen the videos of the Waimea Wall 5.14s—but there are also plenty of killer family-style climbs, like the 5.8 Metamorphosis, a wildly popular retro-bolt of a wandery, old trad line. There’s even a two-pitch, fully bolted 5.3, Clip a Dee Doo Dah, a great route alike for budding leaders and veterans who want a romp-with-a-view. And there’s ample camping—including an American Alpine Club campground—or Airbnbs in neighboring towns.
Pros: Bucolic New England setting; a high concentration of technical climbs that stand out at every grade; perfect rock
Cons: Extremely busy on weekends; slippery rock has poor friction during the muggy days of summer; volatile northern New England weather
Season: Spring, summer, fall
Kids love bouldering—the goal/point is easy to grasp, they don’t need to be scared up on a rope, and they can run around like banshees between climbs, burning hot laps around the boulders to get their energy out. Parents love bouldering for these very reasons, plus the low hassle factor lets them get more climbing in. Outside of Fontainebleau, France, with its placid forest and flat, sandy landings, perhaps the world’s most family-friendly bouldering area is Horse Pens 40, a mini-Font with nearly 400 problems from V0 to V11+ in northern Alabama.
HP40 is a tightly clustered array of gray sandstone boulders and walls—looking like an enchanted gnome forest—in a private nature park/campground on a mountaintop near the town of Steele. The landings are great, and the style is legendary—grappling with forearm-blasting slopers on rounded boulders, squeezing between the overlapping dragon scales, and ootching your way up infamous problems like Bumboy (V3) and Millipede (V5). Meanwhile, you can primitive camp or RV camp in the park or rent a rustic cabin, with the boulders just a short stroll—or little-kid sprint—away.
Pros: Compact area with zero approach and a high density of problems; technical classics at every grade + famous sloper-rasslin’; good landings overall
Cons: Smaller, limited area; seasonal—you don’t want to be here when it’s hot and humid; isolated
Season: Fall, winter
A handful of other zones almost made the list but didn’t quite tick all the boxes for one reason or another, though all might be considered great family-climbing venues in their own right. These include:
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