Deep Cut Guide

Castlewood Canyon SP

359 routes and 186 boulder problems · conglomerate (Castle Rock Conglomerate) · 6,511 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.3 to 5.15, mostly around 5.10.

  1. 1 5.3
  2. 6 5.4
  3. 8 5.5
  4. 14 5.6
  5. 24 5.7
  6. 35 5.8
  7. 42 5.9
  8. 99 5.10
  9. 88 5.11
  10. 38 5.12
  11. 2 5.13
  12. 2 5.15

VB to V10, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 5 VB
  2. 30 V0
  3. 25 V1
  4. 23 V2
  5. 29 V3
  6. 25 V4
  7. 15 V5
  8. 17 V6
  9. 5 V7
  10. 6 V8
  11. 4 V9
  12. 1 V10

Counted from the 544 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

Base placed (one source) 12  Position on wall known 464  Crag only 69 

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Hot Tuna, Rat's Nest, Carmel Corner Layback, Banana Shake, Gorilla Milk (5 climbs, about 150 seconds on Grocery Store Walls, The) would place up to 41 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

Colorado Bouldering: Front Range - Phillip Benningfield, Matt Samet - 2020 every crag it covers

From the publisherBookshop.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

Upper part of Dawson Arkose (Dawson Arkose) — arkose, conglomerate, shale. Paleocene, about 66 to 57 million years old.

Arkosic sandstone, conglomerate, and shale. Includes Green Mountain Conglomerate south of Golden

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. 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: Upper part of Dawson Arkose. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1894

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1894. 28 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1894 USGS sheet covering Castlewood Canyon SP
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Castle Rock, CO 1894 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1894 · 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, 1894 to 1983: USGS topoView.

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.

Castlewood waterfall - panoramio
Castlewood waterfall - panoramio · Jacob Montgomery · 2011 · 815 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Castlewood State Park in the Snow - panoramio · Jacob Montgomery · 2012 · 698 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

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 07:20-08:00
Wall faces NE (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Partly enclosed: the skyline averages 11° above horizontal.
Crags by sun and shade →
Rain & forecast
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 58°/35° · 0.0 mm · 12 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 57°/40° · 0.0 mm · 14 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 60°/38° · 0.0 mm · 15 mph · pm storms 0%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 15:40 UTC

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 39.35285 N, 104.76871 W (Castlewood Canyon SP). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Colorado Parks & Wildlife (state), in Castlewood Canyon State Park. It lies inside state park.

The boundary is close. Land managed by Douglas Land Conservancy or Colorado State Parks comes within 250 m of this point, and the point is not the rock — the wall itself may be on the other side of the line. Check which before you rely on either one's rules.

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.

Rules for all Colorado Parks & Wildlife land

Fees
Every Colorado state park requires an entrance pass for motor vehicles. A daily vehicle pass is $4 to $17 depending on the park; an individual pass covers entry on foot or bike.
Reservations
Eldorado Canyon runs timed-entry vehicle reservations on summer weekends and holidays; see the park's own page. Other parks do not require one to enter.
Permits
A daily pass is valid until noon on the day after purchase. The annual Keep Colorado Wild pass is $29 and is bought with a vehicle registration.

Read on Colorado Parks & Wildlife's own pages, checked 2026-09-29 by John Crawford. What they require, in full, or their own climbing page. These apply to the manager's whole holding; anything specific to this crag is above.

Nearby, from OpenStreetMap

Toilets
722 m away (map)
Mapped parking
177 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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