Portland Rock Climbs provides you with crag information, road and trail directions, and beta for popular rock climbing crags around Portland and Northwest Oregon. You have the opportunity to acquire the high quality Portland Rock Climbs guide book at a variety of local retail outdoor sports shops (or the Internet at various online stores). This book discusses all the popular local hot spot crags such as Broughton Bluff, Rocky Butte Quarry, Madrone Wall, Ozone Wall, Beacon Rock, and more.

Area 51

The Northwest Oregon Rock guide book provides an indepth look at the sport of rock climbing throughout our unique little corner of the state. Don't be left out in the dark this summer without this quality book. Northwest Oregon Rock is loaded with quality information describing climbing areas within an easy days drive from Portland, Oregon.

The book details sites around the Mt Hood region (French's Dome, Razorblade, Enola (aka The Swinery), Coethedral, Pete's Pile, Bulo, Area51, etc.), in the Columbia Gorge region (Chimney Rocks, Rooster Rock, The Rat Cave, Apocalypse Needles, Rabbit Ears, Rock Creek Crag, Windy Slab, Wankers, OH8 crag, Horsethief Butte, etc), in the Santiam valleys (Needle Rock, Elephant Rock, Spire Rock, condensed Menagerie, Santiam Pinnacle, Iron Mtn, Two Girls, etc), in the McKenzie valley area (Skinners, Wolf Rock, Moolack), and the outermost hinterland of northeast Oregon (Spring Mountain, High Valley, etc). Check out the NWOR page for a variety of basic info and purchase the Northwest Oregon Rock book. The NWOR book is available at local outdoor recreation based retail stores, and at various online retailers as well.

The following introductory overview on the nature of rock climbing is designed to help you focus on beneficial solutions with emphasis on good economic vitality for our region. Seven unique climbing crags (within an hours drive of Portland) enhance the beauty and enjoyment of living in this part of Oregon by providing you with a great outdoor based opportunity to be involved in this great region. Our Northwest Oregon Rock book details a plethora of additional crags for nearly 80 miles radius from Portland.
The following links provide general overview information on each rock climbing cliff, directions for how to get there, as well as a road & trail diagram to help guide you quickly to the crag. The seven popular rock climbing cliffs are: Broughton Bluff, Rocky Butte Quarry, Carver Bridge Cliff, Madrone Wall, Ozone Wall, the Far Side, and Beacon Rock. Take a drive to these local crags and explore some of the unique rock climbing opportunities.

The Portland Rock Climbs book, and the NW Oregon Rock guidebook encompass a select group of popular crags. Some are long established rock climbing sites, yet many of the further afield sites are fairly new. These popular crags provide a broad base of consistent rock climbing opportunities. Each chapter provides an in-depth analysis of our regional rock climbing opportunities, both books together covering a general radius of 70-80 miles around Portland, detailing a multitude of fine climbing sites ranging from a large number of places around Mt. Hood, to numerous sites in the Columbia Gorge, and a brief string of sites in SW Washington. The books also detail a selection of sites on the North and South Santiam Rivers, and in the McKenzie River basin near Eugene. Portland Rock Climbs generally discusses popular and very local traditional style lead sites and sport climbing sites, while the NW Oregon Rock book details a broader range of off-trail back country adventure crags or sites, yet also details an extensive fine variety of mixed sport climbing crags such as Enola and Area51.

Route developers, climbers, or boulderers who have new ascent info (new ascents, route update info, or bouldering data) that you would like to see added to our books and database...send us an email with your latest climbing info at: prc@portlandrockclimbs.com

Ebook Beta: We offer a small selection of high quality free Ebook presentations that you can download for quick reference while at the crag. We also have low cost Epubs available to such crag climbing sites as Rocky Butte Quarry. Great for use on various portable devices from Tablets to Smartphones (epub, mobi, iOS, etc) in conjunction with one of your favorite eReader apps. A new era of digital beta utilization has arrived through tools such as Tablets and Smartphones, offering rock climbers a new method for carrying beta information out to the local crag. The market for digital Epubs and PDFs through popular businesses like Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Apple Store, Google Play, and many others, continues to bring fresh new concepts in Epub book technology direct to you through an internet connection. The brief set of Ebook publications that we have included here on the next page provide local rock climbers with an ultra-convenient beta source designed to enhance your abilities to advance to that next rock climbing level.
See our EBOOKS web page for local crags epubs.

The Madrone Wall is now a publicly accessible County Park and popular rock climbing area. Local area climbers are once again enjoying one of Portland's best rock climbing sites (seasonal closure restrictions apply due to peregrine falcon nesting factors). Madrone Wall has long been known locally as one of our best localized all-season rock climbing crags, favored for its ideal grade route technical range (5.6 to 5.11+), and enjoyed for its SW sunny orientation (perfect for Fall and early Winter). If you live locally, or even if your just visiting family in town, definitely go rock climbing at the Madrone Wall.

Browse the Madrone Wall web page Madrone Wall for more details.

With the near constant year-round effort by tiny select teams of local boulderers this region has seen a steady expansion in the development of bouldering, increasing the total quantity of problems, and sites exponentially. Certain sites (like Cascade Locks Boulders) have continued to expand yearly due to the discovery of ever more hidden clusters of boulders scattered in the deep green forests (including the further development of certain core pack clusters of stones previously overlooked). The entire breadth of the CLB site is now over three miles long end-to-end. The CLB site will likely continue to be at the forefront of local bouldering for a number of years into the future as well.

New notable-sized local bouldering havens continue to be discovered and tapped into, such as Three Ravens Boulders, Spirit World Boulders, Phone Home Boulders (near Broughton), etc. Some areas such as Phone Home are very major (locally), and its sites like this that will strengthen the value of the game, and effect climber's concept of where they will gravitate to when delving outdoors for a bit of bouldering around Portland.

The small core personalized teams that continually tap into these havens are seriously committed to the bouldering sport, and each members of these close-knit cliques holds an energetic personal drive to power all the stout difficult crimper problems (including racing up even the easy lower grade V's). They vigorously clean the boulders, enhance the landings, log the FA data and photograph (or video) their send, even prep the paths that take us there; they even do a bit of path upkeep to keep those paths open for ease of access. Without dedicated team players like this in this region, the moss world of bouldering would quickly morph back into a neck-deep swath of 18th century greenery.

And these dedicated individuals explore far and wide, even as far as Horsethief Butte to expand the quantity, and quality of bouldering options. That is why this phenomenon is not merely a NW Oregon thing, but an almost regional momentum, that also encompasses a large number of options even in SW Washington state as well.

One of my favorite convenient drop-in spots is to tag run all the cool power lines at the Balcony zone at CLB - I never knew just how stellar virtual roadside convenient outdoor bouldering could be until I went there. How did I overlook this spot....

Kudos to all you dedicated hard-core players who are forever doing all this tremendous expansive bouldering work continuously developing so many new and favored bouldering havens that we all enjoy visiting.

The season is in and bouldering at fine places like Larch Mtn Boulders has begun. Superb bouldering at its finest, and all within a one hour drive from Portland. You can find virtual year-round bouldering by touring a combination of several local hot spots - Larch Mtn, Cascade Locks Boulders, Empire Boulders, Hamilton Boulders, and BOG Boulders (Bridge of the gods boulders). All are local, fast to get to, and offer plenty of flavor that sure beats a repeat trip to old haunts. Larch Boulders are great from late April thru October (even in winter if dry days occur).

Then shift over to Hamilton Boulders or Cascade Boulders and spend all winter (on dry days) workin' the circuit over there on an endless string of tricky andesite beasts. Since about 2000 the sport of local Portland to The Dalles bouldering scene has expanded exponentially in this region, from small time virtual Carver-based bouldering, to a broad plethora of fine — locally favorite — hotspot hangout bouldering havens. And new little gem boulder spots continue to surface even in recent years. Portland was just a drive-thru to traveling boulderers, but today, its worth the time to actually stop here in town, and check out some of the unique little gem bouldering hangouts we all call home-base havens. And if you have the time for it, make a day drive to Lost Lake Boulders, too.

When sunshine and clear sailing skies beckon, go visit some of these small localized quality bouldering sites. Browse our Bouldering web page for some basic details and vital weblinks about the sport of bouldering in this region.

What makes a rock climbing crag like Enola Hill Crag so great? Answer: The unexpected quality. Climbing at other places like French's Dome offers a pattern of repetition (crimp followed by another crimp) and it's generally an easy process to solve readily visible moves of that sort (such as on FD's 5.10/5.11 crip-fest power routes). But, every so often a climber teams up with their cragging partner and the two of them commit to making the short grind up the gravel road to Enola. They wander down the narrow climbers path to the base of the crag, and stare up at a fine selection of very steep vertical power routes. But they also wonder about some of the moss on the lesser climbed routes. Hmmm...then the team puts in a busy session, and the hours rapidly go by until the entire day is consumed climbing a variety of superb quality power routes.

By the end of that rock climbing day the response is surprisingly similar to what numerous other person's have also said about this impressive little crag.

"I never realized that a tight packed group of routes could be combined with techy power enduro movement and uniquely unexpected techy nuances - all combined so well into just one single 50-70' rock climbing route, and all of this at a crag so conveniently close to Portland."

So those persons who have been there ('Been there - done it') they all tend to have a completely different opinion of the crag after just one single visit. In summation, they give the Enola crag notably high value stars rated quality - in their opinion certainly a top-tier climbing crag for this local region.

Yep, what you never knew before...now you do. Better check out Enola at some point in your climbing career.