Deep Cut Guide

Rock Hard Tower

2 routes · granodiorite (Mount Evans batholith) · 11,952 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

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How well located

Position on wall known 2 

No route here has its own point yet. The map pin is the crag. At the wall? Survey it: 30 seconds per route.

Rock, from the geologic map

Granodiorite of Mount Evans batholith. Mesoproterozoic, about 1,600 to 1,000 million years old.

Gray, massive to strongly foliated, coarse-grained, mostly porphyritic biotite-hornblende granodiorite, which ranges in composition from monzogranite to tonalite (Aleinikoff and others, 1993a). Locally contains as much as 5 percent of an aplite-pegmatite phase consisting of dikes and irregular-shaped bodies of massive to weakly foliated aplite and magnetite-bearing pegmatite. Formerly believed to be part of the Early Proterozoic Routt Plutonic Suite of Tweto (1987), due to petrographic and textural similarities to rocks of that suite and limited Rb-Sr data (for example, Bryant and Hedge, 1978). However, U-Pb zircon date is 1,442±2 Ma (Aleinikoff and others, 1993a), confirming emplacement with Middle Proterozoic Berthoud Plutonic Suite of Tweto (1987)

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. 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: Granodiorite of Mount Evans batholith. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1903

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1903. 30 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1903 USGS sheet covering Rock Hard Tower
USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Georgetown, CO 1903 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1903 · 1:62,500 sheet
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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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, 1903 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

  • Mountaineering in Colorado: the peaks about Estes Park · Frederick H. Chapin · 1889

    The first book of Colorado climbing. Chapin's 1887-88 ascents of Longs Peak, Hallett, Ypsilon and the Mummy Range, with the approaches as they were before the park.

    Internet Archive (Harvard University copy, Appalachian Mountain Club, Boston) · Public domain · read it

  • Trail and Timberline, volume 2 (1918) · Colorado Mountain Club · 1918

    The Colorado Mountain Club's own magazine in its sixth year, with the club's outings and ascents as its members wrote them up at the time.

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

  • Mountaineering in the Rocky Mountain National Park · Roger W. Toll, U.S. National Park Service · 1919

    The Park Service's own mountaineering guide, four years after the park was made. Peak by peak, with the routes of the day and the first recorded ascents Toll could find.

    National Park Service, scan at the Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Alpine Rock 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.

Upper lake and Mt. Evans, Chicago Lakes, Colo.
Upper lake and Mt. Evans, Chicago Lakes, Colo. · Detroit Publishing Co. · 1900
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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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.

Mountain Lake label QS:Len,"Mountain Lake" label QS:Lde,"Bergsee"
Mountain Lake label QS:Len,"Mountain Lake" label QS:Lde,"Bergsee" · Albert Bierstadt · 1863 · 620 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Sovereign · Jb Lardizabal · 2008 · 358 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Mount Evans Road in a Thunderstorm (6) (5925168060) · Alan Stark from Goodyear, AZ, United States · 2011 · 460 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Chicago Lakes, Mount Rosalie · William Henry Jackson · 1873 · 677 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Chicago Lakes, Mount Rosalie · William Henry Jackson · 1873 · 677 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Chicago Lakes, Mount Rosalie · William Henry Jackson · 1873 · 866 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Chicago Lakes, Mount Rosalie · William Henry Jackson · 1873 · 866 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · 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.

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
In shade all day
Wall faces NW (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Partly enclosed: the skyline averages 12° above horizontal.
Crags by sun and shade →
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 39.62482 N, 105.62095 W (Rock Hard Tower). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Arapaho National Forest (federal). It lies inside wilderness area, national forest.

Land manager from USGS PAD-US (public domain), read 2026-09-29. It is the manager of the crag's map point, which can be a long way from the wall. What you may do on the rock is the manager's to say, not ours.

Rules for all Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests land

Fees
No entrance fee for the forest. Some locations require a reservation, pass, permit or day-use fee.
Overnight
Camping more than 14 days in a 30-day period, or more than 30 days in a 365-day period, is prohibited across the forests and the Pawnee National Grassland. Dispersed camping is within 300 feet of most Forest Service roads, on National Forest land; the MVUM shows which.

Read on Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests's own pages, checked 2026-09-29 by John Crawford. What they require, in full, or their own climbing page. These apply to the manager's whole holding; anything specific to this crag is above.

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