Deep Cut Guide

Hell's Gate

2 routes · Granitic rocks of 1400-m.y. age group · 10,168 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

How well located

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.

Rock, from the geologic map

Granitic rocks of 1400-m.y. age group (Silver Plume Granite, Sherman Granite, Cripple Creek Granite, St. Kevin Granite, Vernal Mesa Granite, Curecanti Granite, Eolus Granite, Trimble Granite) — alkali feldspar granite, granite, minor quartz monzonite. Mesoproterozoic, about 1,600 to 1,000 million years old.

Includes Silver Plume, Sherman, Cripple Creek, St. Kevin, Vernal Mesa, Curecanti, Eolus, and Trimble Granites or Quartz Monzonites; also, San Isabel Granite of Boyer (1962) and unnamed granitic rocks

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: Granitic rocks of 1400-m.y. age group. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1909

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1909. 18 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1909 USGS sheet covering Hell's Gate
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Mount Jackson, CO 1909 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1909 · 1:125,000 sheet
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

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, 1909 to 1994: 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.

Ice Palace, Leadville, Colo · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1896 · albumen
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.

Ice Palace, Leadville, Colo · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1896 · albumen
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.

Ice Palace, Leadville, Colo. · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1896 · albumen
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.

Arkansas smelter, Leadville, Col. · Graves, C. H. (Carleton H.), -1943 · 1900 · stereograph
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.

Leadville, Col. · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1901
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.

Leadville, Colo. · Sawdey, E. F. · 1909
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.

Fishing stream near Leadville, Colorado · Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990 · 1941
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.

Homes in old mining town, Leadville, Colorado · Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990 · 1941
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.

Homes in old mining town. Leadville, Colorado · Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990 · 1941
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.

Homes in old mining town. Leadville, Colorado · Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990 · 1941
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.

13 more at the Library of Congress.

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 10:20-16:00
Wall faces SW (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 21° 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 39.28957 N, 106.56189 W (Hell's Gate). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by White River 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 White River National Forest land

Rules
The forest strongly recommends dispersed campers pack out solid human waste using an approved disposable or self-contained system rather than burying it in a cathole.
Overnight
Camping more than 14 days in any continuous 30-day period is prohibited, counted from the first day of occupancy. Some places allow dispersed camping only at designated sites and some run a shorter 7-day limit in summer.

Read on White River National Forest'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.

Keep Deep Cut Guide free

No ads, no paywall, no account. You can chip in directly to help keep it running.