Ice Knife Area
9 boulder problems · Landslide deposits · 10,120 ft
What's here
V1 to V14, mostly around V5.
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
Position on wall known 7 Crag only 2
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 The Ice Knife, Rainbow in the Dark (2 climbs, about 60 seconds on Ice Knife Boulder) would place up to 2 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.
Rock, from the geologic map
Landslide deposits. Quaternary, younger than 781,000 years.
Deposits of unsorted and unstratified debris, on slopes or at base of slopes, that are commonly characterized by hummocky topography. Many of the landslides and landslide deposits form on unstable slopes that are underlain by shale, siltstone, and claystone on east flank of hogback belt and on slopes of North Table Mountain and South Table Mountain near Golden. Younger deposits are commonly bounded upslope by crescent-shaped headwall scarps and downslope by lobate toes. Unit locally includes material displaced chiefly by rotational rock slides, rotational earth slides, debris slides, earth flows, and earth slide–earth flows as defined by Varnes and Cruden (1996). Some deposits probably are formed by translational slides and rock or earth creep. Sizes and lithologies of clasts and grain-size distributions of matrices of these deposits reflect those of the displaced bedrock units and surficial deposits. Landslide deposits are prone to continued movement or reactivation due to natural, as well as human-induced, processes. Deposits in mountainous terrain derived from Precambrian quartz-feldspar gneiss (Xf) and biotite gneiss (Xb) locally contain blocks of rock as long as several meters. Landslide deposits derived from Pierre Shale (Kp), Laramie Formation (Kl), and Denver Formation (bKd) are rich in clay. Some of this clay is expansive and locally may have high potential for shrinking and swelling (Shroba, 1982). Deposits on gentle slopes along and east of hogback belt locally include minor sheetwash and creep-deformed deposits. Deposits in mountains locally include minor rock-fall deposits. Estimated thickness 5–50 m
This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Kellogg and others, 2008, USGS Geologic Investigations Series 3000). 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. Every crag on this unit: Landslide deposits. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.
On the map since 1903
The USGS has mapped this ground since 1903. 29 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.
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, 1903 to 1983: USGS topoView.
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.
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.
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.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
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.
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.
12 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.
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Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · 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
Ice Knife Boulder
- 1 The Ice Knife V14-15
- 2 Poked by a Mermaid V14
- 3 Carnage V12-13
- 4 Rainbow in the Dark V9-10
ROYGBIV Boulder
- 1 Turd in the Corner V1-2
- 2 ROYGBIV V5
- 3 Over the Rainbow V5
Elsewhere at this crag
- Bad Desire V2
- I'm On Fire V5
Also within 3 km
- Dark Horse Boulder393 m · 6 boulder problems · 10,033 ft
- Curve Block1,889 m · 2 routes and 1 boulder problem · 9,550 ft · Curve Block
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.
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.
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
The map point for this crag is on land managed by Arapaho National Forest (federal). It lies inside national forest.
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 Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests land
- Fees
- No entrance fee for the forest. Some locations require a reservation, pass, permit or day-use fee.
- Overnight
- Camping more than 14 days in a 30-day period, or more than 30 days in a 365-day period, is prohibited across the forests and the Pawnee National Grassland. Dispersed camping is within 300 feet of most Forest Service roads, on National Forest land; the MVUM shows which.
Read on Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests'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
- 1,542 m away (map)
- Mapped parking
- 302 m away (map)
- Campsite
- Clear Lake Campground, 1,642 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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