The Tan Buttresses
17 routes · granodiorite (Mount Evans batholith) · 13,282 ft
What's here
5.8 to 5.12, mostly around 5.10.
Counted from the 17 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 17
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 Fallen Angel, Space Miser, The Black and Tan Towers (3 climbs, about 90 seconds) would place up to 14 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
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. 27 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
Report this item
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, 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
Geological and geographical atlas of Colorado and portions of adjacent territory · F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories · 1877
Mountaineering in Colorado: the peaks about Estes Park · Frederick H. Chapin · 1889
Trail and Timberline, volume 2 (1918) · Colorado Mountain Club · 1918
Mountaineering in the Rocky Mountain National Park · Roger W. Toll, U.S. National Park Service · 1919
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.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
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
Report this item
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
- 1 Fallen Angel 5.11+
- 2 Noth'N But a Good Time 5.10+
- 3 MOAC Memorial Route 5.10+
- 4 Hoag-Fisher 5.10+
- 5 Lazy Sunday Route 5.10-
- 6 Anniversary Route 5.9+
- 7 [Redacted] 5.8
- 8 Damn it Feels Good to be a Hamsta 5.12-
- 9 Work-Life Balance 5.10+
- 10 Dog Fight 5.10
- 11 Goat Food 5.11-
- 12 Astro Goat 5.11
- 13 Space Miser 5.11
- 14 Hard to Say 5.10
- 15 Musafar's Home Cookin' 5.9
- 16 Pin Route 5.9
- 17 The Black and Tan Towers 5.9
Also within 3 km
- The Black Wall531 m · 23 routes · 13,108 ft
- The Alpine Lite Cliffs1,904 m · 18 routes · 12,376 ft
- The Aprons2,116 m · 10 routes · 13,514 ft
- Sawtooth Ridge, Mt. Bierstadt/Evans combo2,173 m · 1 route · 13,802 ft · Sawtooth Ridge, Mt. Bierstadt/Evans combo
- West Buttress2,468 m · 2 routes · 14,073 ft
- Mount Evans, North Face2,506 m · 1 route · 13,743 ft
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
The map point for this crag is on land managed by Arapaho National Forest (federal). It lies inside wilderness area, national forest.
The boundary is close. Land managed by Pike National Forest comes within 250 m of this point, and the point is not the rock — the wall itself may be on the other side of the line. Check which before you rely on either one's rules.
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.
Nearby, from OpenStreetMap
- Toilets
- 1,708 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.
Keep Deep Cut Guide free
No ads, no paywall, no account. You can chip in directly to help keep it running.