Middle Fork Needles
4 routes · shale (Mancos Shale, with sandstone) · 7,083 ft
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 Tilted Tower SE Arete, Tilted Tower East Face Right (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
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 1924
The USGS has mapped this ground since 1924. 19 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.
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 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.
![[Man bathing in Pagosa Hot Springs, Colorado]](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/stereo/1s40000/1s47000/1s47100/1s47165v.jpg)
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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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.
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Routes
Also within 3 km
- Cast Iron Crag0 m · 7 routes · 7,083 ft · Cast Iron Crag
- Fire and Blood Crag0 m · 4 routes · 7,083 ft · Fire and Blood Crag
- The Runaways1 m · 2 boulder problems · 7,084 ft · Runaways, The
- West Fork1 m · 11 boulder problems · 7,084 ft · West Fork
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.
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.
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
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.
Nearby, from OpenStreetMap
- Toilets
- 334 m away (map)
- Mapped parking
- 178 m away (map)
- Campsite
- Pagosa Riverside Campground, 3,749 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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