Living in our Nation's Capitol is an unlikely climbing destination when you think of monuments, museums and Air Force One. However, the best kept secret here in Metro D.C. is the 20 minute accessability to all the mostly top rope routes you could climb in a week. On either sides of the famous Potomac river is Great Falls National Park, which spans the Virginia and the Maryland sides. The park collects a modest fee and some frequent visitors purchase season or yearly passes. On the Maryland side a few miles down stream is another crag known as Carderock. This popular crag has been formally climbed since the early forties. Abundance of scenery, vegetation, and apparent seclusion in a climbing and kayaking novelty park, offers an instant get-a-way from home without really leaving.Then, if your instant get-a-way should require elaboration, a number of crags can be approached in as little as 45 minutes (Sugar Loaf Mountain) to 3 1/2 hours, for the ultimate "local" mulit-pitch destination (Seneca Rocks West Virginia). For the super "local" crags we have The New River Gorge and The Gunks each of which in the 5-6 hour radius.

This section of the website has some of our favorite 'local' climbing destinations listed by state. The areas list are not intended to provide extensive beta for the area if other beta can be easily found in other sources but rather to let folks know whats around.

Each area is marked in the title as to the type of activities can be found there. Using the 'Filter' feature you can see only those areas that might be of interest to you. The marks are: apline, rock or ice and are further marked as tr (toprope) or trad (traditional) type areas.