Nanaimo River Climbing

This digital Nanaimo River 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 Nanaimo River days smoother, safer, and more dialed.

Conglomerate sandstone bouldering in one of the best locations on the Island. Nanaimo River is also a very popular swimming spot, so make sure to bring your swimwear if you plan on coming here in the summer. Rock quality is all over the place with some bomber stuff in the river bed and boulders generally being more brittle/chossy the farther they are located up the banks.
Check the Nanaimo River Flow Monitoring website before you go:
(https://wateroffice.ec.gc.ca/report/real_time_e.html?stn=08HB034) 
With a water level of 1.5m recorded at the monitoring station, mostly... Show more

This digital Nanaimo River 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 Nanaimo River days smoother, safer, and more dialed. Conglomerate sandstone bouldering in one of the best locations on the Island. Nanaimo River is also a very popular swimming spot, so make sure to bring your swimwear if you plan on coming here in the summer. Rock quality is all over the place with some bomber stuff in the river bed and boulders generally being more brittle/chossy the farther they are located up the banks. Check the Nanaimo River Flow Monitoring website before you go: (https://wateroffice.ec.gc.ca/report/real_time_e.html?stn=08HB034) With a water level of 1.5m recorded at the monitoring station, mostly everything is climbable. Boulders actually in the river such as Clairvoyance, Fortune Cat, Bass Hole, and many of the Upper Dark Side boulders are only climbable at the lowest river heights in summer at around 0.60m. Serene always requires a landing as it has water under it all year. The Dragon Claw / Neon Mind area is hard to predict early in the year. Big ponds form here over the winter when the river is high that can take a while to dry up, and this area often collects large logs and debris. Try and reach out to a Nanaimo resident if you are planning on making a trip just to climb around these areas. Turn off Island Highway onto Nanaimo River Road, following signs for Wild Play. Follow Nanaimo River Road for 2.5 km to where the power lines cross the road. Near the gate you will see a large gravel shoulder for parking. Follow the dirt road East beyond the gate and towards the river. The path splits here. Heading left through the trees takes you to the Forest boulders and downstream of Lower Sunny Side. Heading right takes you to a set of stairs heading down the cliff to all of the other areas. Going down the stairs and following the path leads to a fork. Staying right here leads along the cliff to a steep roped descent just above the Try Hard Area. This path is good for early spring and late fall when the river is too high to cross through the Dragon Claw Area. Left at the fork heads straight down to the river. From down here, heading up river leads through the big cave to the Dragon Claw Area, and heading down river will take you straight to Fight Milk. Upper Dark Side is best accessed by crossing the river just upstream of Fight Milk or down stream of Salmon Dance. Lower Dark Side can also be accessed easily this way, or by parking at the Dark Side parking at the end of Riverbend Road.