Deep Cut Guide

Surgery Buttress

16 routes · Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, and Sawatch Quartzite · 6,942 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.9 to 5.12, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 1 5.9
  2. 7 5.10
  3. 5 5.11
  4. 3 5.12

Counted from the 16 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) 1  Position on wall known 15 

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Slippin' Sloan, Surgery Buttress (2 climbs, about 60 seconds on Main Wall) would place up to 11 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

Western Sloper - Jeff Achey, BJ Sbarra - 4th ed. - 2026 every crag it covers

From the publisher

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

Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, and Sawatch Quartzite (Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, Sawatch Quartzite) — limestone, minor quartzite. Paleozoic, about 500 to 341 million years old.

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: Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, and Sawatch Quartzite. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1927

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1927. 20 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1927 USGS sheet covering Surgery Buttress
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Glenwood Springs, CO 1927 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1927 · 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, 1927 to 1981: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Glenwood Springs 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.

The Promenade, Glenwood Springs, Col. U. S. A.
The Promenade, Glenwood Springs, Col. U. S. A. · Kilburn, B. W. · 1890 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Hotel Colorada [i.e. Colorado], Glenwood Springs, Col · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1899 · photochrom
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Glenwood Springs, Col. · The Universal Photo Art Co. · 1900 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Corridor of Hotel Colorado, Glenwood Springs, Col. · The Universal Photo Art Co. · 1901 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Hotel Colorado, Glenwood Springs, Colorado · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1901
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Returning from the hunt - the president of the people, Glenwood Springs, Colorado · H. C. White Co. · 1905 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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[Theodore Roosevelt returning to Glenwood Springs, Colorado] · Underwood & Underwood · 1905
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Bathing in the Pool, Glenwood Springs, Colorado · 1906 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hotel Colorado, Glenwood Springs, Colo. Elevation 5758 feet · 1906 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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General view, Glenwood Springs Bathing Pool, Colo. · 1907 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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2 more at the Library of Congress.

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.

High Canyon adventures - panoramio
High Canyon adventures - panoramio · Alen Ištoković · 2011 · 1,172 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Amtrak Cheeseburger with chips on California Zephyr - June 2022 - Sarah Stierch · Missvain · 2022 · 990 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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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
Wall direction not known yet.
Rain & forecast
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 54°/26° · 0.0 mm · 6 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 58°/36° · 0.0 mm · 9 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 54°/35° · 0.0 mm · 6 mph · pm storms 0%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 18:42 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 39.62375 N, 107.13401 W (Surgery Buttress). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Bureau of Land Management (federal), in Colorado River Valley Field Office.

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 Bureau of Land Management land

Fees
Developed campgrounds are fee sites: at Shelf Road, Sand Gulch is $20 a night for an individual site and $40 for a group site, with no drinking water, hook-ups or trash service. Where a fee area is posted, you must register and pay within 30 minutes of entering it.
Overnight
Camping more than 14 days in any 30-day period at any one location is prohibited, including in a campground, and afterwards you must move at least 30 air miles. Personal property may not be left unattended anywhere on public land for more than 48 hours.

Read on Bureau of Land Management'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
1,129 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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