The 10 Best Family-Friendly Climber Towns in North America

If you’re a climber with kids, living in a family-friendly climber town can mean the difference between climbing and quitting altogether. Kids don’t exactly facilitate the climbing lifestyle. So if you can move to a family-friendly climber town that’s close to the crag and filled with other families who climb, your odds of sticking with the sport—and making it a family affair—increase.

To create this list, we searched for chill climbing venues with friendly staging areas, a short approach, and a good variety of climbs for everyone in the family. We also looked for fun stuff to do off the rock, which might wear your kids out and buy you that precious crag time.

Here are the 10 best family-friendly climber towns in North America, with a bit about what makes each place so good for parents and kiddos alike.

Canmore, Alberta

Encircled by the Canadian Rockies, the mountain town of Canmore is surrounded by massive mountains, turquoise glacial lakes, and so much climbing. You’ll find ample routes around Bow Valley (Yamnuska, Grotto Canyon, Echo Canyon, etc.). In winter, the massive, frozen waterfalls of the Rockies demand to be climbed, too. For families, summer offers a plethora of hikes to scenic venues like Grassi Lakes and Upper Kananaskis Lake. You can also try fun guided activities like helicopter tours, rafting, and sled-dog rides, and e-bike rentals. In winter, families can get their cross-country ski on at the Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park’s network of trails.

Estes Park, Colorado

This gateway town to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) is surrounded by granite and gneiss. You’ll find world-class bouldering and alpine routes within RMNP, fun multi-pitch trad cragging around Lumpy Ridge, and good, small sport areas like Jurassic Park and Wizard’s Gate nearby. The town also has loads of fun tourist attractions, from the Estes Park Aerial Tram. As you drive toward RMNP, you’ll also spot the Giant Rainbow Slide at Fun City—it’s actually pretty dang fun and it’s only $2 per ride to slide down on a burlap sack. There’s also the trail-ringed Lake Estes, where you can rent kayaks, paddleboards, and pontoon boats. But perhaps the most family-friendly attraction for climbers is Performance Park, with 20 moderate sport climbs (plus one gear line and a few boulders) in a city park, with picnic benches and everything.

Fayetteville, West Virginia

Fayetteville is considered the outdoor Mecca of the Southeast for good reason: It sits on the rim of the New River Gorge, with its hulking boulders and thousands of near-perfect single-pitch climbs on dense Nuttall sandstone. And the local rivers—the New, the Gauley, and the Cheat—have world-class rafting that ranges from family-friendly float trips on class I and II water to massive class V rapids. The gorge, meanwhile, recently became a national park. It has plentiful camping, a 100 miles of hiking trails, and kid-friendly activities like fishing and mountain biking. The town itself is charming, complete with a classic red-brick courthouse and family-friendly dining options like Pies & Pints, which has arcade games and a playground.

Jasper, Arkansas

The hamlet of Jasper, deep in the Ozarks, is close to two of Arkansas’s most iconic climbing areas: Horseshoe Canyon Ranch and Sam’s Throne. Tons of other cragging and bouldering also exists on the abundant local sandstone, and across some of the limestone cliffs under development along the Buffalo River (as access gets sorted). Other Ozarks attractions like Lake of the Ozarks and the tourist/entertainment town of Branson, Missouri, have long been major draws for families. But Jasper offers a quieter getaway with other engaging outdoor activities beyond climbing, including rafting, kayaking, and canoeing on the Upper Buffalo River. Horseshoe Canyon Ranch also offers ziplining and mountain biking. Post-adventure, hit up Ozark Cafe, a family-friendly, century-old, Americana-themed burger joint.

Lander, Wyoming

Bucolic Lander has become hip. There might just be more high-end climbing coaches here—among Climb Strong, Power Company, and SUBSTR8—than any similarly sized Western town. The cragging is convenient, with the pocketed dolomite of Sinks Canyon a short drive from downtown, offering long, amazing sport routes and bouldering. And there’s a lot to love about the local rock, too: granite and sharp, old-school limestone. Plus, the legendary pocket-tugging mecca of Wild Iris is only a half-hour away. Lander resembles Boulder, Colorado, in terms of climbing convenience, but without the average starter home cost of a cool $1 million. Median home prices in Lander were in the high $300s as of summer 2025, according to Zillow. The kids will likely clamor to see Popo Agie Falls, a natural waterslide into a swimming hole, or the canyon’s eponymous “Sinks,” where the river disappears into a subterranean cave.

Leavenworth, Washington

Say what you want about the kitsch factor in Leavenworth, which remade itself as a touristy Bavarian village in the early 1960s. But where else in North America can you get the full sauerkraut, bratwurst, giant pretzels, beer steins, polka band experience—not to mention a 2,700-foot long alpine coaster, the Tumwater Twister—while still enjoying access to some of the country’s best climbing. Check out the granite boulders and cliffs of the surrounding Cascades, in particular Icicle Canyon. Or head to Prusik Peak in the Enchantments, home to a classic 5.9 Fred Beckey, the Beckey-Davis, as well as a new-school 5.14a finger crack. If you’re thinking of moving here and feeling priced out, widen that Zillow search to include the nearby, and more modest, city of Wenatchee, at the foot of the range.

North Conway, New Hampshire

A historic center of climbing, North Conway has longstanding traddy flavor on Cathedral and Whitehorse Ledges. Just one scenic hour away, you can also find adventure climbing aplenty on the 1,000-foot slab of Cannon Cliff, New England’s highest. Meanwhile, winter brings epic ice and mixed climbs (e.g., the Black Dike in Franconia Notch) and skiing, both resort and backcountry. For kids, there are attractions like the Conway Scenic Railroad. Though it’s heresy to some, it’s also lovely to drive up the Mount Washington Auto Road to the 6,288-foot summit. If you’re up for full “family fun” tourist immersion, check out Santa’s Village in Jefferson and Story Land in Glen, where you can splish-splash in the “Moo Lagoon,” a splashpad experience described—predictably—as “udderly amazing.”

Moab, Utah

You can’t beat the volume of climbing in the Moab area. Plus, if you get creative, you can viably climb year-round. With its right-off-the-road location and plethora of easy routes, Wall Street is a highly accessible area for families just five minutes from town. Another good spot for the groms is the Small Adventures Wall up UT-313, en route to Dead Horse Point or Canyonlands’ Island in the Sky. Plus, with a new(ish) climbing gym in town, you can train your kids on the basics indoors first. There are also ample harder routes to be found for the grown-ups, from nearby Indian Creek to the granite up in the La Sal Mountains. As the bustling adventure town that Moab has become, there are also plenty of kid-friendly activities. You can’t beat the Moab Giants dinosaur hike and museum. One caveat is that like other tourist destinations, Moab is suffering from a bit of an affordable housing crisis, as out-of-towners swipe up second homes and short-term rentals. The median home price, according to Redfin, was $636,000 in 2025. But if you can swing it, making a life in Moab is worth it.

Stowe, Vermont

This postcard-perfect New England town is the kind with the quaint Main Street and church steeple you’d see in a Hallmark (or Stephen King!) movie. In summer, family-friendly activities abound, like hiking, swimming at Lake Elmore State Park, SUPing on Waterbury Reservoir, and mountain biking on over 50 miles of trail. In winter, snowhounds can head to Stowe Mountain Resort, with its two peaks: Mount Mansfield (Vermont’s high point, at 4,395 feet) and Spruce Peak, offering 116 trails and 2,360 feet of drop. But for climber families, the main draw is the bouldering and ice climbing in Smuggler’s Notch. By summer, send it across a klettergarten of beautiful schist blocks nestled in the hardwood forest. Come winter, those drips, seeps, and gullies freeze solid and it’s time to get your tools out.

Truckee, California

Northwest of Lake Tahoe, the bustling town of Truckee provides a perfect access point for the area’s legendary white, gray, and golden Sierra granite. From the roadside cragging of Donner Summit, to the treasure trove of Tahoe bouldering, the climbing here is so vast that it’s taken four guidebooks to document. For climbing families, Donner has splitter sport, trad, and bouldering with short approaches. The region’s boulders tend to have chill, flat, pine-needle landings. Meanwhile, there are good aquatic options, with Donner Lake right in town, offering 37 public docks, as well as Donner Memorial State Park memorializing the infamous Donner Party, which resorted to cannibalism while snowbound during the winter of 1846-1847. It’s a heckuva story to tell the kids—or, maybe better, visit the KidZone Museum!