The Fire Crags sit in a sloped canyon down from Painted Cave Road. Park at a turnout with trees a couple bends after turning off Highway 154. A short hike takes you right to the top of two huge boulders. The routes below are fairly short but quite challenging and very rewarding. It's more like high-ball bouldering than anything. Try Grib Dat Hole and you'll see what I mean. Start in the cave at the bottom of the upper boulder and follow the bolt line to the right. Jenson's Jugs starting to the left is a fun one too. Easier routes on the west side of the boulder have the added challenge of an odd sideways pull of gravity. Top ropers will want to place a directional if not comfortable with the gnarly pendulum out to sea. Weee! Fire Crags boasts the only bolts of proper strength I’ve seen in Santa Barbara. Some SRENE (Strong-Redundant-Equalized-No Extension; it's an anchoring code) conscious lug put three burly Petzl glue-ins at the top of the upper boulder. They are huge, shiny and about 50 kN strong. Use these for top-roping whenever possible.

Just up the road from the Fire Crags turnout is Painted Cave, a fun little roadside spot to end the day. Try the many ways across Hallway Traverse or the routes going up the roof. There are two other boulders in this area to make a total offering of over 60 problems! A great place for training.

Diagonally across Hwy 154 from Painted Cave is West Camino Cielo. Park on the side of the road right after passing a ranch driveway entrance. A telephone pole on the left marks the ambiguous trailhead to The Playground. The rocks are about a mile in and take some roaming around to find. The hike is beautiful and worth it even if you spend the whole time searching. I took one of my friends here for his first lead, The Dude Abides on the Westside crag. It was the only one without spinning bolt hangers at the top! The harder climbs on other surrounding rocks have better ones. Be ready to pony up for upper 10s to 13s. Boo-yah!

Santa Barbara’s best bouldering spots are tucked away in this same area further down W. Camino Cielo. Lizard’s Mouth seems to be the place most talked of (unfortunately not only by climbers, but shotgun shooters and drunk high school kids alike). The place nevertheless makes for an excellent hang out for you and your chalked up buds. Park at a number of turnouts on either side of the road before you reach the gun club. The boulders are a short distance in on the ocean side. Classic problems here are the upside down roof traverse, Meilee, and the big Lizard’s Mouth Traverse. If you're lucky, you might run into Bob Banks (author of Ocean's 11, a very popular bouldering guide for the central coast) sipping a brewsky between no-footer laps.

If you're looking for a more relaxed setting away from the crowds, try The Brickyard. Park at either of two large turnouts across the road from one another just before the Lizard's Mouth area. A canopy of Oak and Bay make this a nice shaded area during the summer (the trade-off is it tends to be wetter longer after rains during the winter months). Banks holds this site to some of the best problems around, despite the rock being notoriously soft. Choss's the word, embrace it.

“Falling,” informs Evan in an eerily calm tone, and I’m thinking, “Oh crap, here we go…” Whew, the bolt held fine and I didn’t get my pelvis crushed into smithereens. Evan, a 6’4’’ 200 pound lengthy mass of a fellow failed to charm the lichen covering the second pitch of Face Lift at San Ysidro and earned his lead-climbing wings with me, a 5’4” buck eighteen poor excuse for an anchor, on the catching end.

Despite this one section being a great mossy mess, San Ysidro has to be my favorite place to climb in Santa Barbara. The routes are long, the canyon is green, the rock is… well, good enough and options are abundant for top-roping and lead-climbing alike. Bolts there are pretty solid and traditional placements are bomber. Try Applied Magnetics, a classic 5.8 crack put up by Yvon Chouinard himself in the mid-70s using nothing but nuts. It ends at some newer anchors up the slab face to the left. Vanishing Flakes, a couple routes left and pretty much the first climb you pass, used to be rated in the 10s… hence the name. Great Race is a fun bolted face starting half-way up the descent gully between main walls. There are numerous other superb routes starting from the ground along the rest of this wall. Grab some draws, a nut or two and a cam, pick a line and relish in it.

San Ysidro is absolutely the place to be in the height of a summer day when other sites are lacking shade and flowing water. Exit San Ysidro Rd off 101 and go toward the mountains. Turn right on E. Valley Rd/192 and left after the creek crossing on Park Lane. Eventually merge left toward E. Mountain Drive and go to the end where a huge wooden TRAIL sign marks, yes… the trailhead. Join the club in being painfully jealous of every residence you pass along the way.

Gibraltar Rock is an adventure. Gibraltar Road starts across an intersection to the left of a row of mailboxes. Go past the SB Mission on Los Olivos to Mountain Drive (the first right after the fork with an artsy flower mosaic on a rock near the stop sign). The main rock, a blocky face coming into sight after one of many bends on Gibraltar Road, plunges over 150 feet down into Rattlesnake Canyon. Most of the routes start from the halfway-up point. The ones nearest the road make for good top-roping. Build hardy natural anchors (ignore the bent sheet metal hanger on a rusty bolt above Klingon).

T-Crack just around the corner is a Santa Barbara classic. The Bolt Ladder down the road before the main rock is frequented by the Kevin Steele (big wall climber, adventure photographer, UCSB Adventure Programs instructor, robotics consultant… the guy just kicks ass), and other aid climbers training for El Cap. It goes free as well, but I wouldn’t want to fall on the old star bolts toward the top. Toxic Waste Wall and the longer routes of Upper Gibraltar are hidden up a “trail” leading from the road there. Hole in the Wall Boulder is right across the street from the main rock. Just duck and head up the trail from the little clearing next to where most people park. Look out for bees in the “hole.” An easy TR setup over Well Hung on the southwest arête is well worth it. Oh yeah, and there’s a Lower Gibraltar too. Go nuts!

Crag Full ‘O Dynamite is past Gibraltar going right on East Camino Cielo. It's a long six miles from the junction but the view, if not the climbing, is worth the trip. You are basically driving along the summit ridge of the foothills, one of the few places you can see the valley and backcountry on the other side. And you still get the ocean view most of the way! Stop when you hit a long bolted wall to your right. I guess the story behind this one is they dynamited the rock to make way for the road; a reason my buddy Greg justifies climbing it with ice picks in the winter. He also recommends parking on the crag side and belaying out of your trunk or truck bed. Very comfy.

The best climb on the wall, smack dab in the middle, is The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Going diagonally left, start on the lower right (good) and traverse a smeary face (bad). This takes you up a crack to a somewhat awkward step-up over the little roof (ugly). Lots of cool transitions on this climb, you won’t get bored.

If you’re looking for something harder, try out the 10s on Hermit Rock (the glob of conglomerate sandstone sticking out of bushes and shrubbery just across and down from the road).
The heat and snake occupancy make this a less-than-ideal summer destination, which is why god gave you Kryptor, just a mile down the road. Blue schist is apparently easier to grip when it's cold, making this 'green dome' a good thought for the winter. It has over 20 routes, and most of the climbs are on the really freakin' hard end of that spectrum. My friend Spenser makes it all sound pretty enticing: "A bitch of a drive onto the dirt road, a hectic but brief hike gets you to the base of the wall.

Remember that rock climbing is inherently dangerous! Helmets are ALWAYS a good idea. I got the rope caught behind my leg this past summer in Yosemite and flipped on a climb I thought I had already bagged. Needless to say, I probably wouldn't be writing this had I not been sportin' a brain bucket. My boss calls it "cheap insurance."

And finally, please help to preserve our climbing areas. Don't leave trash. Chipping is for losers. We should abide by the Leave No Trace ethic. Thanks!

For further reference:
- Rock Climbing Santa Barbara and Ventura, Steve Edwards, Falcon Guide (2000).
-Ocean's 11, Bob Banks, bouldering guide (2003).
-Rockclimbing.com
-Santabarbaradayhikes.com, for more directions and up-to-date trail conditions.