Rainbow Climbing

This digital Rainbow 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 Rainbow days smoother, safer, and more dialed.

If you’re looking for some bouldering a little closer to the Bay Area, Rainbow may be a viable option. This will save you time from having to drive all the way into the Tahoe Basin. The area boasts some high quality granite boulders with short approaches located in a serene setting. I-80 is very close, which makes access easy, but also adds a bit of road noise. The boulders below the road are small, but quality. However, the boulders above the road­—The Trigantor and The Sugar Cube—are home to some classic highballs. Above the Sugar Cube is the Upper Rainbow Circuit. With a 30 min... Show more

This digital Rainbow 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 Rainbow days smoother, safer, and more dialed. If you’re looking for some bouldering a little closer to the Bay Area, Rainbow may be a viable option. This will save you time from having to drive all the way into the Tahoe Basin. The area boasts some high quality granite boulders with short approaches located in a serene setting. I-80 is very close, which makes access easy, but also adds a bit of road noise. The boulders below the road are small, but quality. However, the boulders above the road­—The Trigantor and The Sugar Cube—are home to some classic highballs. Above the Sugar Cube is the Upper Rainbow Circuit. With a 30 minute approach, this zone is very worthy. It has a great variety of boulders and a few mega classics. Since the publication of the original Super Topo guide, the property owner who owns all the boulders on the north side of I-80 has become very unwelcoming to climbers and can be quite hostile. For that reason I am not including any boulders on the north side of the highway and I do not recommend poaching his private land. This is a bit of a bummer for the climbing community, but there are still plenty of legal boulders to keep you busy. On I-80, just west of Kingvale, take the Rainbow exit. From the bottom of the I-80 off-ramp, drive one mile southwest and park in the big pullout on the right with the pit toilet and info board. Now, backtrack 100 feet down the road then start walking toward I-80. In just a hundred feet, you will reach Rainbow Boulder “A.” From there refer to the overview map and boulder topos to find the rest of the nearby boulders. For the Sugar Cube, drive another 0.1 miles past the main Rainbow parking area and park on the right or left amongst the houses. On the south side of the road look for the Old Lincon Hwy, it’s a small dirt road near the houses and just right of a three car garage with white doors. Follow the Old Lincon Hwy for about 100 yds until you get to an old cabin. The Entrance Slab is just before the cabin on the right and the Sugar Cube is just left of the cabin in a swampy area.