Rock Climbing in July

Rugova canyon cuts a thousand meters deep into the Accursed Mountains three kilometers from the UNESCO-listed Patriarchate of Peja, and since Kosovo's first via ferrata was bolted here in 2014, its cabled routes, Mat and Ari, named for local children, have become the Balkans' best-value vertical day out: a hundred meters of exposure for around fifty euros with gear, and near-zero crowds. The operator bench is credible beyond the destination's years: Balkan Natural Adventure is Travelife-certified and has been featured by the Guardian and BBC Travel, and Butterfly Outdoor Adventure was founded by Uta Ibrahimi, the first Albanian woman to summit Everest and a UIAA-certified guide. Frontier value is the honest pitch: this is what Chamonix cost sixty years ago, with the crowds to match.

Suesca is Colombia's climbing school: a two-kilometer sandstone wall with more than 500 routes from beginner slabs to 5.13 test pieces, split about evenly between sport and trad, all ten minutes' walk from a town of climber cafes and gear shops. Nowhere else in the country concentrates this much instruction, from first-time top-rope days to multi-day courses that take you from zero to leading, and the crag's eighty-year history gives it the worn-in, generational feel of the world's classic training grounds. An hour from Bogota, it turns a capital layover into a climbing trip.

The Adrspach-Teplice Rocks are the largest rock town in central Europe and one of the world's great sandstone climbing areas. Two connected labyrinths of towers, walls and gorges near the Polish border hold several thousand routes on soft Bohemian sandstone, climbed under a strict local tradition: no chalk, no metal protection hammered into the rock, and no climbing for at least a day after rain, because wet sandstone breaks. Protection is knotted slings jammed into cracks and the occasional ring, and there is a signature team technique of standing on a partner's shoulders to reach a start. The result is committing, adventurous climbing on friction and cracks rather than sport-bolted faces, best learned with a local guide who knows the ethics and the towers. For trad climbers this is a bucket-list place, and even beginners can top a tower on a course.

Romsdalen is Norway's alpine climbing capital. Trollveggen, the Troll Wall, is Europe's tallest vertical rock face at around 1,100 meters, and the 1,550m Romsdalshorn is the country's classic guided alpine rock summit: six to seven pitches at Norwegian grade 4 and a six to eight hour round trip with a summit view over the whole valley. Andalsnes itself holds Norsk Tindesenter, the national mountaineering center, with Norway's highest indoor wall and the Romsdalsstigen via ferrata rising straight off the fjord in two grades. Uniquely for alpine granite of this scale, you arrive by train: the scenic Rauma railway ends at the foot of the walls.

Widely regarded as one of the finest sport climbing destinations in the world, Céüse's 1,600m band of gray-white limestone holds an extraordinary concentration of hard, sustained routes. Climbers travel from every continent to project at sectors like Berlin Wall and Biographie, but the 600+ routes include enough mid-grade lines that the mountain rewards a full range of ability. The 1.5-hour approach walk along a forested ridge filters out casual visitors.

The Llanberis Pass and Clogwyn Du'r Arddu are the heritage crags of British trad climbing, where Joe Brown rewrote the standards and the 1953 Everest team trained, and the Dinorwig slate quarries above the village add a climbing landscape that exists nowhere else on earth. The British trad ethic itself, no bolts, leader-placed gear, boldness as part of the grade, is the international draw: sport climbers come here to learn a different relationship with risk. The valley hosts Plas y Brenin, the National Outdoor Centre for England and Wales, which has taught climbing here for nearly sixty years, and the local IFMGA guides of Llanberis Guides cover everything from first trad leads to Cloggy's great faces.

Rio is the only major city where you can leave a beachfront hotel, ride fifteen minutes, and climb granite multi-pitch to one of the most famous summits on earth. Sugarloaf, Morro da Urca, and Babilonia hold more than 270 routes of one to ten pitches, one of the largest urban climbing areas anywhere, with classics like Via dos Italianos and Coringa topping out above Guanabara Bay; on Corcovado the routes finish beneath the arms of Christ the Redeemer. The tradition here dates to 1912 and keeps a bolted-but-bold local character, which is why even strong visiting climbers hire a local guide and why beginners can be walked up an easy classic the same week.

Deep water soloing, ropeless climbing above the sea with the Mediterranean as your crash pad, was invented and perfected on Mallorca's east-coast sea cliffs, and Chris Sharma's 2006 arch line at Es Pontas made the island the discipline's world reference. It remains the only major DWS venue with professional guided-camp infrastructure, including coaching from an IFMGA-certified guide, which turns a sport that looks reckless into a taught progression. When the sea cools, more than a thousand sport routes and sea-cliff multi-pitches take over, so the island climbs twelve months a year. This is a different discipline from El Chorro's bolted walls: you cannot do this anywhere else at this standard.

Long limestone routes and a concentration of via ferrata on the south face, with the Rieseneishoehle ice caves inside the massif below.

Austria calls the Gesause the school of alpinism. Long limestone multi-pitch on big walls above the Enns, with a reputation for seriousness rather than convenience.

Granite and gneiss above the valley floor, with sport routes, alpine rock and via ferrata reachable from the same base as the canyoning and rafting.