Spatial Guest! Keyhole Canyon Demonstrator and History Book
Climbed on January 11, 2026.
Fun Rating: Quite Fun!!
Rain, rain, go somewhere other than here or however that goes.
“Boooooooo” - Readers of this blog, again.
It’s been beautiful, sunny, and dry here for weeks and we’ve been loving how much sandstone we’ve been able to climb in Red Rock. Oh yes, these are truths I’m speaking, my goodness how fun it’s been and dry and safe and lovely. Based on this “totally not wet, I promise, bro why don’t you believe me why would I emphasize this this much otherwise?!” weather, I jetted down to Keyhole canyon with Megan and our friend Mel to check out the area at long last.
Only about 45 minutes outside of Las Vegas proper, and closer to our home than it has been in the past, Keyhole is a smallish granite canyon almost perfectly in the middle of Vegas and Searchlight. The road, the quality of which is described variably depending on which comment you read, was freshly graded which made for an easy (if bumpy) drive for the couple miles of unpaved road. On reaching the canyon, you are presented with a little gravel loop that you can park or turn around in that is separated from the canyon by a wood and cable fence. I cannot overstate how easy the approach is here, the closest routes are less than a minute away from the parking, and getting to the First Waterfall area, which is sort of the delineator of the main sections, takes less than 10 minutes of easy flat walking through a gravel wash.
Megan and I spoke about the contrast between Keyhole and similar traditional crags in Red Rock and Keyhole stacks up very favorably. With a short drive and even shorter approach, if you compare it to something like Chocolate Rocks (which we feel has a similar vibe to it, but far far fewer routes) you’re saving more than half an hour of hiking uphill in exchange for about 15 more minutes of driving. As much as I like Chocolate Rocks, its hard to beat Keyhole in terms of access when you look at it that way.
Mel halfway up the Demonstrator Crack
Now, all the nice access and easy approaches in the world wouldn’t save a crag from shit rock or unaestethic climbs or any number of issues. I’m pleased to say that the stuff we climbed was a blast. Enjoyable to climb, harder than it looked, and quite old-school in its feel. We ticked two separate Herbst climbs off, hence this being a “spatial guest” post, as the Tour proper is only for Red Rock. I do love a Herbst climb though, and where there are such climbs to be found, there you will find me as well.
We started with Demonstrator Crack. It’s a bit up a loose hill and looked extremely imposing from the wash. Once you get up closer to it, you can see that while it’s fairly vertical for a 5.7 there’s actually quite a few holds and features to moderate it to some degree. It starts off friendly and doesn’t ever really get too zesty. A couple of interesting bulge sections and an offwidth pod lead you to the top of the formation without too much stress. There’s currently a decent looking tat anchor around a large formation at the top, I threw a couple pieces in around it and built a top rope anchor for Mel and Megan.
Megan looking so rad.
After that we moved up the hill a little ways to History book. I thought this one was a little less fun than Demonstrator but had some really cool moves on it regardless. The beginning of the route goes up a fairly easy right facing corner with a ton of features that leads up to a nice ledge splitting the first and second halves of the climb. Once at the ledge you’re met with the crux of the route. I feel strange describing a 5.7 as having a distinct crux, but this one definitely qualifies. The route kicks back dramatically for just a move or two up a crack that just eats gold camalots. After a couple feet, you’re met with a loose and spooky flake inside the crack that narrows it down to around .75. I didn’t trust the flake to survive a fall, so ended up talking myself into moving past it in the hope that the route wasn’t too sandbagged. After another couple moves I was met with the jugs I was hoping for and was able to saunter up to the same anchor ledge as Demonstrator. This time I brought the M&M duo up and we did the absurdly easy walkoff down the gully that the climbs are contained within.
As we walked off we ogled a couple mixed routes (watch this space for another spatial guest post!) and enjoyed watching the only other climbing party in the canyon repeatedly whip at the crux of A Might Fright. A short while later we were back in the canyon and wanted to sample some of the bouldering in the wash (heresy, I know.) We did a couple slabs, I flashed a couple problems I was surprised to, and I enjoyed a lovely no-hands hike up an easy slab.
Setting up the belay at the top of History Book
After our brief diversion with the pebbles, we rolled ourselves back into the car and made the easy sub-1-hour drive back to drop Mel off and get home. For the ride back and the rest of the day I kept finding myself remarking on how surprisingly fun the canyon was and how much better a rainy day option it was than the limestone across town (sorry not sorry Gun Club.) While I do think I’ll be back to get on Mega Poser at Lone Mountain again, there’s just so much more to climb of such quality in Keyhole that I think I’ll be spending a lot more time there. The other thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet is more for the antisocial folks out there. It’s incredibly easy to walk to the top of almost all the formations and set a toprope anchor. Some are bolted but everything else takes a very easy trad setup with some cordelette to extend it over the edge of Athe cliff. I’ll be doing some mega-laps on Chicken Leg next time I have a TRS day on a saturday or even potentially after work once the days get longer.
All this to say that while I hope this place doesn’t get crowded, this is my new go-to option for rainy day climbing close to Vegas. The granite is solid and fine-grained, the friction is great, there’s good variety of wall aspects so you can chase sun or shade depending on what you need. Then you add in the easy drive and even easier approach and you get a pretty banging locals area. Certainly not something I’d road trip from LA for, but if you’re here anyway and the sandstone is wet this is the best option outside of when Charleston is dry.
Until next time, which is whenever I feel like it, I wish you well and hope you climb some cool stuff.
Megan just after the History Book crux.
There are beautiful petroglyphs everywhere. Respect them and don’t climb on anything that they’re near.
