Two posts since registering 6 years ago? Perhaps you didn't see that obvious search function on every forum page?

http://www.rockclimbing.com/...rch_string=best+city

If you lived in a place like SLC, I think you'd be foolish not to at least dabble in some of the winter sports! World class.

It's hard to believe you're seriously equating Phoenix with Denver. Have you lived in Denver?

Snowboarding 2 hours away? Where? I've been to LA quite a few times and it takes 2 hours to move 15 miles from the airport......if you work a normal 40 hour week, good luck heading towards the mountians on Friday afternoon in the summers. Same goes for the Bay area. 4 hours to Yosemite, yeah right.

I have not heard it mentioned much on this site, but Nashville is actually a pretty good climbing city.

Pros: fairly quick access to all the great climbing in east Tennessee: Obed, Foster Falls, T-Wall, and many others. Close to King's Bluff. Not too far from Red River either. And Arkansas climbing is not too insanely far away for weekend trips. Good weather, long climbing season, can climb through the winter if you don't mind a bit of cold.

Cons: Only King's Bluff is within that 1-2 hour drive. From downtown Nashville it's about 45 minutes. East Tenn climbing is about 3 hours, RRG about 4.

I would suggest Chattanooga, but you said major city.

I suppose that if everyone is mentioning "passable" climbing cities that are big, such as Nashville, Phoenix, etc., we would have to include Atlanta, GA, as well. Within 2-3 hours of a lot of really good Southeastern Rock, local bouldering at Boatrock. I'm sure summers would suck, though.

I'm often surprised that Reno/Sparks isn't mentioned in conversations of this type. While the economy here isn't exactly booming, the greater metropolitan area has a population of about 500,00 along with the amenities/industry variety expected with a city of that size.

Reno is close to so much quality rock it would be silly to name it all. But a sampling....
Donner - 45 min
Eagle Lakes - 1.5 hr
Woodfords - 1.5 hr
Leap,Spires,Loaf - 2ish hr
Tuolumne - 3.5 hr
Rock Creek - 4 hr
Bishop/Gorge - 4ish hr

Granted, Reno is similar to SLC in that much of the rock is under snow for part of the year. But like SLC, these areas also offer world class winter sports opportunities. Plus, climbing can be found nearly year round within a 5 hour drive.

Ditto .. find a better decent sized place closer to Yosemite?

Have to have a fair amount of climbing in the 1-2 hours range max. I don't mind the occasional longer trip, but 3+ hours travel time is a long day or an entire weekend.

Out west, the best two are SLC and Vegas. Denver 3rd I suppose.

After that, LA, SF and Phoenix probably roughly equal. I wouldn't say any of those are great climbing towns unless you are willing to drive a fair bit on the weekends, in which case there is tons of great stuff.

Naw, I stayed in Broomfield for 6 years, learned to climb with Rossiter's Falcon guides tucked into my rucksak, graduated from high school there, come back every thanksgiving and christmas, and a litany of minor holidays, attendings Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, and worked at Rock'n & Jam'n for a few months. I've never lived inside Denver city limits though.

My point was that the classics-to-climbers ratio in both cities is about the same, its just that Denver has WAAAAY more mediocre to lousy climbing than Phoenix does, and the climbing season isn't year round in Phoenix. Denver is supposedly a great climber town mostly because you have access to a lot of different climbing, but in the 8 months I spent in the Denver area last year (which I mentioned in my previous post), the only major front range areas I didn't visit were the South Platte and the Golden Cliffs. The problem is everybody has this ridiculous hard on for Eldo and Boulder Canyon, and most of the climbing in either is bad. There are definitely some world-class routes in both, but the only time I didn't have to wait in line to do classic in Eldo was a tuesday last may when I got there at 6am. To do Gambit (which is way overrated, by the way).

Just curious, but what exactly makes Nashville only "passable?"

Okay, your creds are way better than mine on the whole knowing the Denver scene, so I should just shut up now I guess.

The only thing I'd add is that IME, Eldo really is pretty mediocre up through 5.9. Once you get into the mid 5.10 range and up though, wow. I've only started to scratch the surface, but, for example, in one small area you have Climb Of The Century, Center Route, Handcrack, Pony Express, Rincon, just to name a few. All absolutely five star routes.

So there's a lot of fantastic climbing in Eldo. Some of it just comes with a kinda steep entrance exam.

I do agree with you though that Boulder Canyon is overrated.

GO

I'm often surprised that Reno/Sparks isn't mentioned in conversations of this type. While the economy here isn't exactly booming, the greater metropolitan area has a population of about 500,00 along with the amenities/industry variety expected with a city of that size.

Reno is close to so much quality rock it would be silly to name it all. But a sampling....
Donner - 45 min
Eagle Lakes - 1.5 hr
Woodfords - 1.5 hr
Leap,Spires,Loaf - 2ish hr
Tuolumne - 3.5 hr
Rock Creek - 4 hr
Bishop/Gorge - 4ish hr

Granted, Reno is similar to SLC in that much of the rock is under snow for part of the year. But like SLC, these areas also offer world class winter sports opportunities. Plus, climbing can be found nearly year round within a 5 hour drive.

You specifically asked if I had lived in Denver, so you kind of set yourself up for that one.

All of this blathering aside, I think I over-reached quite a bit when I said it was terrible. To my mind, a good city for climbers requires at least one road-trip-worthy (that is, nation- or world-class) destination that a person could conceivably hit after work, and enough decent crags within similar range that crowds can be avoided. And Denver just doesn't have any crags that are worth road tripping for.