Donner Summit Climbing

This digital Donner Summit climbing guidebook gives you GPS navigation, verified topos, and beta for hundreds of climbs. Explore classics and hidden gems with offline access to maps, directions, and beta videos. Whether it's your first visit or fiftieth, KAYA makes your Donner Summit days smoother, safer, and more dialed.

Donner Summit is probably the single finest rope climbing area in all of Lake Tahoe. It holds a huge variety of stellar granite in a High Sierra setting. It has a long, rich history of climbing starting in the early 1970’s. The bouldering is also excellent, with many different areas to explore. The circuits are scattered mostly around the main climbing crags and almost everything is roadside or has a short approach. Summertime is when things truly get underway up here after all the snow finally melts in June. Although Donner is fairly high in elevation, many of the spo... Show more

This digital Donner Summit climbing guidebook gives you GPS navigation, verified topos, and beta for hundreds of climbs. Explore classics and hidden gems with offline access to maps, directions, and beta videos. Whether it's your first visit or fiftieth, KAYA makes your Donner Summit days smoother, safer, and more dialed. Donner Summit is probably the single finest rope climbing area in all of Lake Tahoe. It holds a huge variety of stellar granite in a High Sierra setting. It has a long, rich history of climbing starting in the early 1970’s. The bouldering is also excellent, with many different areas to explore. The circuits are scattered mostly around the main climbing crags and almost everything is roadside or has a short approach. Summertime is when things truly get underway up here after all the snow finally melts in June. Although Donner is fairly high in elevation, many of the spots bake in the sun for a better part of the day in mid summer and the exposed nature of the area makes shade hard to find. Grouse Slabs probably gets the most sun and the boulders in the forest at the Shit the Bed area likely have the best shade, so plan accordingly if you are here on a hot day. DRIVING: Directions to each zone can be found in each specific Subarea. The directions are given in mileage from the 4-way stop sign at the intersection of Donner Pass Road and Coldstream Road. To find this intersection read the following directions: From Truckee take I-80 west and take the Donner Lake Road exit. Turn left and drive over I-80 to the 4-way stop. From The Bay Area take I-80 east, exit at Donner Pass Road and you will arrive a the 4-stop.