Lightner Creek

9 boulder problems · shale (Mancos Shale, with sandstone) · 7,144 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

V2 to V9, with no single grade dominating.

2 V2
2 V3
2 V4
1 V7
2 V9

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 5 Crag only 4

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 Southeast Arete, Boobs On My Granny (2 climbs, about 60 seconds) would place up to 3 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

Mancos Shale — shale, sandstone. Late Cretaceous, about 95 to 91 million years old.

In northwest and west-central: Intertongues complexly with units of overlying Mesaverde Group or Fm; lower part consists of a calcareous Niobrara equivalent and Frontier Sandstone and Mowry Shale Members; in areas where the Frontier and Mowry Members (Kmfm), or these and the Dakota Sandstone (Kfd) are distinguished, map unit (Km) consists of shale above Frontier Member. In Southwest: Lower part contains Juana Lopez Member (Kmj)

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: Mancos Shale. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1898

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1898. 30 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1898 USGS sheet covering Lightner Creek — **USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Durango, CO 1898** · U.S. Geological Survey · 1898 · 1:62,500 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, 1898 to 1983: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

1877 Geologic Map of Colorado (Hayden), high-resolution scan · F. V. Hayden; scan by the Colorado Geological Survey · 1877

The whole-state sheet of the 1877 atlas, scanned at full resolution by the state survey and free to download.

Colorado Geological Survey (publication HM-01-04) · Public domain · read it
Geological and geographical atlas of Colorado and portions of adjacent territory · F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories · 1877

The first geology anyone drew of this ground. Hayden's survey mapped the state in the 1870s; these are the sheets, with the rock units coloured as they understood them then.

Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Durango 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.

Sheepherder near Durango, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1939
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive

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