Deep Cut Guide

Gold Star Canyon

9 routes · sandstone (Wingate Sandstone) · 5,350 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.9 to 5.11, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 3 5.9
  2. 2 5.10
  3. 4 5.11

Counted from the 9 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

Crag only 9 

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

Complex of gneisses and schists — metamorphic; intermediate; gneiss; schist. Proterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,000 million years old.

Gneisses and schists; intruded by silicic to intermediate igneous rocks.

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Day and others, 1999, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-0427). 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: Complex of gneisses and schists. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1934

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1934. 17 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1934 USGS sheet covering Gold Star Canyon
USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Colorado National Monument, CO 1934 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1934 · 1:24,000 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, 1934 to 1981: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Grand Junction Area 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.

"Groups of Monuments" in the Colorado National Monument, Grand Junction, Colo. · Keystone View Company · 1927 · 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.

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
sun 12:40-15:40
Wall faces W (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 15° above horizontal, so the sun has to climb well clear of the rim before it reaches this wall.
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 39.08444 N, 108.69518 W (Gold Star Canyon). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by National Park Service (federal), in Colorado National Monument. It lies inside national monument.

Land manager from USGS PAD-US (public domain), read 2026-09-29. It is the manager of the crag's map point, which can be a long way from the wall. What you may do on the rock is the manager's to say, not ours.

Nobody has yet read National Park Service'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

Mapped parking
833 m away (map)
Campsite
Saddlehorn Campground (Loop C), 3,691 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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