Deep Cut Guide

Lower Caves

3 routes · unconsolidated alluvium (Modern alluvium) · 7,702 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

How well located

Crag only 3 

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

Rock, from the geologic map

Modern alluvium — unconsolidated alluvium. Cenozoic, up to about 2.6 million years old.

Includes Piney Creek Alluvium and younger deposits

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:500,000 sheet (Horton and others, 2017, U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 1052). 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 500 m wide on the ground, so the wall itself may be the neighbouring unit. Every crag on this unit: Modern alluvium. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1954

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1954. 14 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1954 USGS sheet covering Lower Caves
USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Gunnison, CO 1954 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1954 · 1:24,000 sheet
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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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, 1954 to 1984: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Gunnison as a whole, not this wall. More in the reading room.

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.

Chipeta Falls, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado
Chipeta Falls, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado · 1906 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Currecanti Needle, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado · 1906 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Giant balanced rock, Gunnison River, Colo., U.SA. · 1910 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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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.

Gunnison–Crested Butte Regional Airport
Gunnison–Crested Butte Regional Airport · Jeffrey Beall · 2013 · 1,021 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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GUC GUNNISON AIRPORT COLORADO FROM N35204 FLIGHT LAS-EWR (7404172230) · Eric Salard · 2009 · 1,204 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Western Colorado University Welcome Center · Mshuang2 · 2019 · 570 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Gunnison, Colorado (101349912) · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · 2006 · 61 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Gunnison, Colorado (101350124) · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · 2006 · 61 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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U.S. Route 50 near Gunnison, Colorado (101349561) · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · 2006 · 61 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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U.S. Route 50 near Gunnison, Colorado (101349660) · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · 2006 · 61 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Gunnison banner · Mshuang2 · 2019 · 83 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Main Street of Gunnison, CO · Mshuang2 · 2019 · 83 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Beer Whiskey flight · Mshuang2 · 2019 · 92 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Vienna Bakery-Johnson Restaurant · Jeffrey Beall · 2010 · 96 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Gunnison, Colorado (9179288145) · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · 2013 · 97 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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13 more on Commons.

Routes

Also within 3 km

Straight line between the two crags' map points, each of which can be some way from its rock. For when this wall is full, or the sun has found it.

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
Wall direction not known yet.
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 38.54480 N, 106.92800 W (Lower Caves). 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
181 m away (map)
Mapped parking
147 m away (map)
Campsite
Unnamed, 4,683 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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