Main Elk Crag

65 routes · limestone (Leadville Limestone) · 6,499 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.7 to 5.13, mostly around 5.12.

1 5.7
3 5.8
5 5.9
15 5.10
19 5.11
20 5.12
2 5.13

Counted from the 65 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 65

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 Ent Killer, Aries, Castration Station, Shake Your Groove Thing, Patchouli, Gecko Blaster, Evil Twin (7 climbs, about 210 seconds) would place up to 58 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

Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, and Sawatch Quartzite (Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, Sawatch Quartzite) — limestone, minor quartzite. Paleozoic, about 508 to 337 million years old.

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. 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: Leadville Limestone, Williams Canyon Limestone , Manitou Limestone, and Sawatch Quartzite. 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. 19 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1906 USGS sheet covering Main Elk Crag — **USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Grand Hogback, CO 1906** · U.S. Geological Survey · 1906 · 1:125,000 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, 1906 to 1981: 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 Glenwood Springs 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.

The Promenade, Glenwood Springs, Col. U. S. A. · Kilburn, B. W. · 1890 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive

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