Deep Cut Guide

Martinez Creek Cliffs

4 routes · Dakota Sandstone and Burro Canyon Fm · 7,170 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

How well located

Position on wall known 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 Blues Incognition, For Crying Out Loud (2 climbs, about 60 seconds) would place up to 2 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 Sandstone and Burro Canyon Fm (Dakota Sandstone, Burro Canyon Formation) — sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Cretaceous, about 129 to 95 million years old.

Sandstone, shale, and conglomerate. In northwest and west-central: Lower Cretaceous. In southwest: Lower and Upper Cretaceous.

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: Dakota Sandstone and Burro Canyon Fm. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1924

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1924. 21 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1924 USGS sheet covering Martinez Creek Cliffs
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Pagosa Springs, CO 1924 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1924 · 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, 1924 to 1984: 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.

[Man bathing in Pagosa Hot Springs, Colorado] · O'Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882 · 1874 · stereograph
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.

Routes

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 09:30-14:10
Wall faces SE (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 24° 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 37.24233 N, 107.12678 W (Martinez Creek Cliffs). 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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