Deep Cut Guide

Reynolds Lake

13 boulder problems · Biotite gneiss · 11,467 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

V0 to V8, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 1 V0
  2. 2 V1
  3. 2 V2
  4. 3 V3
  5. 2 V4
  6. 1 V5
  7. 1 V6
  8. 1 V8

Counted from the 13 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 13 

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 Rising Waters, Gene Parmesan (2 climbs, about 60 seconds on Reynolds Boulder) would place up to 8 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

Biotite gneiss. Paleoproterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,600 million years old.

Gray, medium-grained, equigranular, well-foliated gneiss typically containing approximately 25–50 percent quartz, 20–30 percent plagioclase (approximately An30), 0–30 percent microcline, 10–15 percent biotite, 0–15 percent muscovite, 0–10 percent sillimanite, 0–5 percent hornblende, 1–2 percent opaque minerals, and a trace zircon. Most outcrops contain 5–20 percent granitic layers (leucosomes). Sillimanite, where abundant, occurs in fibrous, elongate, light-colored aggregates or clots as wide as about 1 cm. Migmatitic biotite gneiss in Clear Creek gave preliminary U-Pb zircon date on nonmelt phase of 1,773±18 Ma; near Pine, just south of map area, similar rock gave U-Pb zircon date of 1,780±9 Ma (W.R. Premo, unpub. data, 2005)

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

On the map since 1905

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1905. 29 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1905 USGS sheet covering Reynolds Lake
USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Central City, CO 1905 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1905 · 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, 1905 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.

Idaho Springs · Marchington, C. (Clarence) · 1903 · photomechanical print
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.

Men at work inside a mine. Idaho Springs, Co. · Noyes, S. A. · 1910
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.

[Ford auto on mountain road near Idaho Springs, Col.] · 1910
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.

Abandoned gold mill. Idaho Springs, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1941
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.

Abandoned gold mill. Idaho Springs, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 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.

Abandoned gold mill. Idaho Springs, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1941
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.

Pile of tailing from gold mill, defunct. Idaho Springs, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1941
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.

Remains of gold mill. Idaho Springs, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1941
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.

Rocky Mountains near Idaho Springs, Colorado · Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990 · 1941
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.

Road into Idaho Springs, Colorado · Vachon, John, 1914-1975 · 1942
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.

1 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 07:40-14:00
Wall faces SE (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 17° above horizontal, so the sun has to climb well clear of the rim before it reaches this wall.
Rain & forecast
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 37°/22° · 0.0 mm · 31 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 40°/25° · 0.0 mm · 19 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 45°/24° · 0.0 mm · 20 mph · pm storms 1%
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 39.83680 N, 105.68286 W (Reynolds Lake). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

We don't know who manages this ground: PAD-US doesn't map this point as protected land, which most often means it is private. Find out whose it is before you go.

Nobody has yet read the land manager'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.

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