West of Rustic Climbing

This digital West of Rustic 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 West of Rustic days smoother, safer, and more dialed.

The climbing areas located West of Rustic comprise the best climbing the canyon has to offer...period. Stunning landscapes coupled with incredible stone in every shape and style imaginable make this every climber’s dream. The canyon is wide and open here, dotted with black and white streaked cliffs which loom over fields of house-sized boulders. The earliest record of climbing here is in Bob Horan’s Fort Collins Area Guide from 1995. In it, he describes Scott Blunk, John Shireman, Chris Vogues, and Mark Wilford being active in the area, but no further details are giv... Show more

This digital West of Rustic 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 West of Rustic days smoother, safer, and more dialed. The climbing areas located West of Rustic comprise the best climbing the canyon has to offer...period. Stunning landscapes coupled with incredible stone in every shape and style imaginable make this every climber’s dream. The canyon is wide and open here, dotted with black and white streaked cliffs which loom over fields of house-sized boulders. The earliest record of climbing here is in Bob Horan’s Fort Collins Area Guide from 1995. In it, he describes Scott Blunk, John Shireman, Chris Vogues, and Mark Wilford being active in the area, but no further details are given. I started climbing here on a tip from Hank Jones in 1999 who had parked his RV up there and developed some obvious low-hanging fruit. Pat Goodman and I stumbled upon the 420 Boulders one day and my eyes became open to all that the Upper Canyon has to offer. Those early days of bouldering development were done by guys like Jeremy Bisher, Pat Goodman, Ryan Anglemeyer, Tom Blackford, Francis Sanzaro, Will Lemaire, Mike Mangino, Mike Auldridge, Herm Feissner, Jay Shambo, and the author. In 2002, the legendary Chris Sharma passed through town and established the classic testpieces Sharma Lunge*** v10 and Kingpin**** v12. Dave Graham also spent some time here in those early days snagging coveted first ascents like Black Boulder*** v9, Cloudwalker*** v10 and the world-renowned Circadian Rhythm*** v13. All of this hype brought an explosion of traffic to the canyon in those years following and with that excitement came motivation to find new amazing boulders. Climbers like Brian Camp, Jason Nadeau, Colin Horvat, Paul Dusatko, Zach Lerner, Skyler Bol, and Sam Rothstein have all contributed hundreds of additional problems since those early days. Around 2008, a friend loaned me a hammer drill and I began exploring the cliffs above the boulders. These initial forays into bolting led to cliffs like Vista Crag and Turtle Crag. I quickly realized how incredible the potential for route climbing was West of Rustic. This surge of motivation eventually led to areas like Poudre Falls, Bristlecone Castle, and Moose Crag. Most of the bolting, cleaning and sending work was being done by Jason Tarry, Chris Tirrell, Doug McKee, Ryan Nelson, R.D. Pascoe, Chris Hofer, myself and Steve McCorkel at Boston Peak. New crags, routes and boulders continue to be found and developed to this day.