Deep Cut Guide

Torture Chamber

31 routes and 8 boulder problems · sandstone (Dakota Sandstone) · 5,356 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.6 to 5.11, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 1 5.6
  2. 4 5.7
  3. 8 5.8
  4. 8 5.9
  5. 8 5.10
  6. 2 5.11

VB to V10, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 2 VB
  2. 2 V0
  3. 2 V1
  4. 1 V3
  5. 1 V10

Counted from the 39 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 39 

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 Unknown arete, Out of the Horse's Mouth, Unknown Smaller Roof Crack, Tree Roof, Some boulder problem with a crack (5 climbs, about 150 seconds) would place up to 34 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

Dakota Group — sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Mesozoic, about 145 to 100 million years old.

Light-gray to brown-gray, fine-grained, ripple-marked sandstone and interbedded gray carbonaceous shale in upper part, and chert-pebble conglomerate and sandstone in lower part; base is major regional unconformity. In eastern foothill belt, the Dakota consists of South Platte Formation in upper part and Lytle Formation in lower part. Sandstones are strongly cemented with silica and form prominent ridges; blocks of weathered Dakota sandstone litter slopes surrounding outcrops. The Dakota was deposited in fluvial and swamp environments during a major marine transgression. Thickness ranges from about 88.4 m (southeast) to 74.7 m (northeast) to 76.2 m (northwest) to 75 m (southwest) across the quadrangle

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Workman and others, 2018, U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3399). 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: Dakota Group. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1906

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1906. 31 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1906 USGS sheet covering Torture Chamber
USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Fort Collins, CO 1906 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1906 · 1:62,500 sheet
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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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, 1906 to 1980: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Fort Collins 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.

After the Explosion of a Ten-Ton Blast above Fort, Collins, Colorado
After the Explosion of a Ten-Ton Blast above Fort, Collins, Colorado · Keystone View Company · 1908 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Big Thompson Canyon. Loveland, Fort Collins and Estes Park Road, Estes Park, Colo. · 1908 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Exploding a Ten-Ton Blast above Fort Collins, Colorado · Keystone View Company · 1908 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Junction of Loveland and Fort Collins Road, Estes Park, Colo. · 1908 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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14 year old Henry in the fourth grade of the Rockwood Place School. He is four grades behind, and the teacher says it is on account of the beet work. Location: Fort Collins, Colorado · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Girls - one 14 years and two 12 years old in the third grade of the Rockwood Place School. Some children 7 and 8 years old in this grade. Regular age is 8 and 9. Teacher says retardation is due chiefl · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Views of "The Jungle," in Ft. Collins, the section in which the beet workers live when not away working the beets. In Greeley, this segregated section is called "The Pansy Bed" (from the varied and vi · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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[Views of "The Jungle," in Ft. Collins, the section in which the beet workers live when not away working the beets. In Greeley, this segregated section is called "The Pansy Bed" (from the varied and v · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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[Views of "The Jungle," in Ft. Collins, the section in which the beet workers live when not away working the beets. In Greeley, this segregated section is called "The Pansy Bed" (from the varied and v · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Harvesting barley with combined harvester and threshing machine drawn by tractor, near Fort Collins, Colo. · Keystone View Company. · 1919 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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3 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.

Horsetooth Reservoir, CO
Horsetooth Reservoir, CO · Greg Younger from Fort Collins, USA · 2008 · 64 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Fort Collins, Colorado (2520230668) · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · 2008 · 612 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Untitled · Collyn Rankin · 2013 · 872 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Leucocrinum montanum - Anders Hastings 01 · Anders Hastings https://www.inaturalist.org/people/andershastings · 2024 · 1,108 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Leucocrinum montanum - Anders Hastings 02 · Anders Hastings https://www.inaturalist.org/people/andershastings · 2024 · 1,108 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Leucocrinum montanum - Anders Hastings 03 · Anders Hastings https://www.inaturalist.org/people/andershastings · 2024 · 1,108 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Looking North Across Horsetooth Res - panoramio · nikko23_99 · 2011 · 1,207 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Black-tailed Prairie Dog 386040223 · (c) Anders Hastings, some rights reserved (CC BY) · 2024 · 1,255 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Looking North Across Horsetooth Res - panoramio (1) · nikko23_99 · 2011 · 1,257 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Mentzelia decapetala - Alaina Krakowiak 01 · Alaina Krakowiak https://www.inaturalist.org/people/alainakrakowiak · 2020 · 1,306 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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IBM PC Computer (493303882) · Luke Jones · 2007 · 1,394 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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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
In shade all day
Wall faces N (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Open sky in most directions.
Crags by sun and shade →
Rain & forecast
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 64°/40° · 0.0 mm · 11 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 61°/40° · 0.0 mm · 8 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 60°/41° · 0.0 mm · 7 mph · pm storms 0%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 18:41 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 40.52969 N, 105.13763 W (Torture Chamber). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Larimer County (local government), in Horsetooth Reservoir.

The boundary is close. Land managed by City of Fort Collins 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.

Nobody has yet read Larimer County'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

Toilets
1,463 m away (map)
Mapped parking
118 m away (map)
Campsite
Inlet Bay Campground, 2,012 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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