High Wire Crag

40 routes · gneiss and schist · 6,548 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.7 to 5.13, with no single grade dominating.

3 5.7
5 5.8
4 5.9
7 5.10
8 5.11
11 5.12
2 5.13

Counted from the 40 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 40

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 Everything Rhymes with Orange, Deuces Wild, Full House, Indirect Savant, Life After Death (5 climbs, about 150 seconds) would place up to 35 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.

The guidebook for this area

Rock Climbing Clear Creek Canyon - Kevin Capps - 3rd ed. every crag it covers

From the publisher Bookshop.org

Bookshop.org links are affiliate links: if you buy through one we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop.org gives its profits to independent bookshops.

The book has the topos, the descriptions and the local knowledge this page can't. Buying it helps support the people who know the crag best.

Rock, from the geologic map

Felsic gneiss. Paleoproterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,600 million years old.

Light-colored gneiss characterized by a predominance of quartz and feldspar. Biotite commonly forms less than 10 percent of the rock. Interlayered biotite-gneiss, hornblende gneiss, or amphibolite are locally abundant. Locally contains abundant sillimanite (20 to 30 percent of the rock).

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Trimble and others, 2003, U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Investigations Series I-856-H). 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. The rock named at the top of this page comes from the public geology of this area; this card is the map's answer. Every crag on this unit: Felsic gneiss. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1899

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1899. 24 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1899 USGS sheet covering High Wire Crag — **USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for West Denver, CO 1899** · U.S. Geological Survey · 1899 · 1:125,000 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, 1899 to 1994: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

1877 Geologic Map of Colorado (Hayden), high-resolution scan · F. V. Hayden; scan by the Colorado Geological Survey · 1877

The whole-state sheet of the 1877 atlas, scanned at full resolution by the state survey and free to download.

Colorado Geological Survey (publication HM-01-04) · Public domain · read it
Geological and geographical atlas of Colorado and portions of adjacent territory · F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories · 1877

The first geology anyone drew of this ground. Hayden's survey mapped the state in the 1870s; these are the sheets, with the rock units coloured as they understood them then.

Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it
Trail and Timberline, volume 2 (1918) · Colorado Mountain Club · 1918

The Colorado Mountain Club's own magazine in its sixth year, with the club's outings and ascents as its members wrote them up at the time.

Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Golden 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.

Golden City, C.T. - looking west · Mathews, Alfred Edward, 1831-1874 · 1870
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked

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