Who to ask before you climb
Climbing rules belong to whoever manages the ground, not to the crag. So they are written down once per manager here, from that manager's own pages, and every crag we can place on their land points at it.
We know the land manager for 2,253 of 2,256 crags, from USGS PAD-US. Rules have been read and written down for 1,379 of them (22,094 routes), and 56 other managers still have nobody's reading on file. The list further down names them rather than letting this page read as finished.
None of this is permission. It is what each manager states, quoted, with the date somebody checked it. Rules change and a page can be out of date: the manager's own site wins over ours, always.
Managers whose rules we've read
- Pike-San Isabel National Forests312 crags · 3,078 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- White River National Forest243 crags · 1,763 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- Bureau of Land Management214 crags · 5,193 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests189 crags · 4,157 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- Jefferson County Parks & Open Space128 crags · 2,064 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- Rocky Mountain National Park101 crags · 1,034 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks96 crags · 1,957 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- Colorado Parks & Wildlife68 crags · 2,396 routes · checked 2026-09-29
- Rifle Mountain Park28 crags · 452 routes · checked 2026-09-29
Managers we haven't done yet
These manage crags on this site and nobody has yet read their rules onto a page here. The 12 largest of 56. The national forests and BLM field offices are the big ones, and they are deliberately not done as one entry each: their rules are set per forest and per field office, so a single “Forest Service” page would be a guess standing in for nine different answers.
- San Juan National Forest · 64 crags, 553 routes
- Larimer County · 53 crags, 462 routes
- Boulder County Parks & Open Space · 51 crags, 400 routes
- City of Colorado Springs · 46 crags, 394 routes
- Gunnison National Forest · 42 crags, 275 routes
- Uncompahgre National Forest · 29 crags, 376 routes
- National Park Service · 26 crags, 326 routes
- Routt National Forest · 23 crags, 110 routes
- Rio Grande National Forest · 18 crags, 134 routes
- La Plata Open Space Conservancy · 15 crags, 71 routes
- Private · 12 crags, 137 routes
- American Indian Lands · 11 crags, 95 routes
Know one of these well, or work for one? Tell us — a manager's own wording is worth more than our reading of it.
Current closures are tracked separately, with dates. Each crag's own page names its manager and whether a boundary runs close to it.