Characteristics
An ideal climbing area has these qualities:
- Close to an access road
- Large number of different routes
- Solid and stable rock
- Safe descent routes
- Good weather
- Free access
- Uncrowded
Yosemite Valley for instance is very nearly ideal. The valley is at a low elevation and allows climbing from March to November, it has an enormous amount of high-quality granite, with hundreds of routes ranging from the easy (The Grack) to some of the longest and hardest in the world, such as The Nose on El Capitan. As part of Yosemite National Park, the bases of the big walls are just a short walk from good roads, camping is available, hiking trails make the descents easy, and of course the scenery is world-class. Its main problem is that it's so popular that some routes will often have multiple parties of climbers getting in each other's way.
Most climbing areas fall short of the ideal, usually making up for it in some other way, sometimes just by being the closest good area to some city.
Read more about this topic: Climbing Area