When to climb where
The useful question in July isn't which route is best, it's which wall is out of the sun. Each list below is worked out from the direction the wall faces and where the sun actually is on a day in that season — so it's as true next year as this one.
- Colorado crags in the shade on a summer afternoon254 crags
Walls out of the sun from midday on in July — where to go when it is too hot to touch rock in the open.
- Colorado crags that are shady in the morning and sunny later438 crags
Out of the July sun until midday, then lit through the afternoon: climb them early and be gone by lunch.
- Colorado crags that stay shady almost all day in summer107 crags
The coolest rock in the state in July. Not literally sunless — at this latitude a north-facing wall still catches an hour or so early and late — but shaded through the whole middle of the day.
- Colorado crags high enough to be cool in summer603 crags
Crags at or above 9,000 ft: the other answer to a July afternoon. Thinner air, cooler rock, and storms that build after lunch — start early.
- Colorado crags in the sun on a winter afternoon513 crags
South-leaning walls that catch the low January sun through the middle of the day — where winter climbing is comfortable rather than survival.
- Colorado crags in the sun all day in winter271 crags
Lit from morning to evening in January. The warmest rock available in the coldest month.
- Colorado crags that catch the morning sun in spring529 crags
Sunny early on an April morning: walls that dry and warm first after a cold night.
- Colorado crags in the afternoon sun in autumn682 crags
Lit through an October afternoon, for the season when the sun is the point rather than the problem.
No car, or no reservation? Crags within a walk of an RTD stop.
What these lists don't know
Two limits, both of which can send you to a hot wall, so they're worth knowing before you drive:
- Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted where we've measured the skyline. That matters most in Clear Creek, Eldorado and Boulder Canyon, where the wall opposite blocks the sun for hours: at The Canal Zone it is the difference between three hours of July sun and just over one. Where a crag hasn't been measured yet we fall back to the direction the wall faces alone, and the crag's row says so.
- We don't know which way about half of Colorado's crags face. 1,012 of 2,256 crags have no aspect on record, so they can't appear on any of these lists. A crag missing from the shade list is not a crag we've checked and found sunny.
Where a wall's direction comes from a guidebook we say so on the crag's page; otherwise it's measured from USGS elevation data. How sure are we?