Deep Cut Guide

The Ameristar

8 boulder problems · Quartz-feldspar gneiss · 8,335 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

V0 to V12, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 1 V0
  2. 2 V3
  3. 1 V6
  4. 1 V9
  5. 1 V10
  6. 1 V11
  7. 1 V12

Counted from the 8 climbs here that carry a grade. Shown only where there are at least 5 of them — below that the shape is noise.

How well located

Position on wall known 8 

No route here has its own point yet. The map pin is the crag. At the wall? Survey it: 30 seconds per route.

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Roulette, F*ck the Wind (2 climbs, about 60 seconds) would place up to 6 more climbs between them. Survey the wall →

“Up to” because the estimate between two surveyed routes is only used when they turn out to be close enough together on the ground.

Rock, from the geologic map

Quartz-feldspar gneiss. Paleoproterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,600 million years old.

Gray, dark-gray, white, pinkish-gray, and tan, moderately foliated to well-foliated, layered, fine- to coarse-grained (mostly medium grained) quartz-plagioclase-microcline-biotite gneiss. Proportion of minerals varies widely. Layers typically 10 cm to several tens of meters thick and commonly wavy. Locally contains layers of foliated monzogranite and granodiorite. May contain minor, thin layers of hornblende gneiss and amphibolite. Commonly migmatitic. U-Pb date on weakly foliated rock of monzogranitic composition in northwestern part of Indian Hills 7.5-minute quadrangle is 1,776±4 Ma. Weathers tan to pinkish tan in rounded outcrops. Crops out widely throughout map area

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Kellogg and others, 2008, USGS Geologic Investigations Series 3000). The point can be a few hundred metres from the rock, a cliff often stands on the line between two units, and at that scale a line on the map is about 100 m wide on the ground, so the wall itself may be the neighbouring unit. Every crag on this unit: Quartz-feldspar gneiss. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1905

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1905. 27 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1905 USGS sheet covering The Ameristar
USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Central City, CO 1905 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1905 · 1:62,500 sheet
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Public domain, U.S. Geological Survey. The sheet shows the ground as the survey found it then, which is why a trail or road you know may be missing. Every sheet over this point, 1905 to 1983: USGS topoView.

From the archives

Photographs of this area held by the Library of Congress, oldest first. Every one carries the Library's own "no known restrictions on publication"; anything else is left out.

View of "Black Hawk Point" · Shober, Charles · 1862
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Black Hawk Bridge · Weitfle, Charles, 1836-1921 · 1878 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Black Hawk Mill · Weitfle, Charles, 1836-1921 · 1878 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Black Hawk, Colo., 1882--Looking south east · Beck & Pauli · 1882
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Photographs near this crag

Taken within 1.5 km of this crag's map point and published under a licence that lets us show them, from Wikimedia Commons. The coordinates say where the camera was, not what it was pointed at, so some of these will be the creek or the trail rather than the rock.

Historic Gilpin Tramway trail · Jeffrey Beall · 2024 · 871 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 04-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 05-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 12-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 14-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 15-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 16-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 17-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 19-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 22-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 23-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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1982-06-22-Central City Col L 24-ps · Rainer Halama · 1982 · 598 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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15 more on Commons.

Routes

Photos from climbers

No photos here yet. If you're at the crag, yours would be the first.

Pick a photo from your camera roll rather than taking one here: a picture taken inside a browser usually has no location saved in it, and we check that the photo was taken at this crag before publishing it. Photos of guidebook pages and topos are refused — they're the author's work. By sending one you're letting us publish it.

Nobody reviews these before they appear, so anyone can report one and it's hidden straight away — including you, if you change your mind, and including a photographer who finds their own picture here.

Taken at the crag by climbers and published as they sent them. Each one's own location had to be within 0.5 km of this crag before we accepted it. See something that shouldn't be here? Use Report this photo under it and it's hidden at once. Anything else, write to us.

Sun today
sun 07:20-16:00
Wall faces S (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Partly enclosed: the skyline averages 10° above horizontal.
Rain & forecast
No recent weather for this crag.

Conditions reported

Nothing reported recently.

Report what you see

Reports are dated and fade on their own: wet rock after 3 days, a bad bolt after a year. No names, no text.

Access & safety

Emergency: call 911. Read out your location: Works without signal. If GPS fails, this crag's approximate map point is 39.80425 N, 105.50181 W (The Ameristar). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

We don't know who manages this ground: PAD-US doesn't map this point as protected land, which most often means it is private. Find out whose it is before you go.

Nobody has yet read the land manager's own rules for this crag and written them down here, so treat the above as where you are, not as what you may do.

Nearby, from OpenStreetMap

Toilets
919 m away (map)
Mapped parking
421 m away (map)
Campsite
Denver West/Central City KOA, 1,613 m away (map)

Distances are a straight line from this crag's map point, which can itself be hundreds of metres off; a road may be much longer. Mapped by OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), so a toilet missing here may simply be unmapped. Parking here is what OSM has drawn nearby, not a guidebook's directions.

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