Deep Cut Guide

Mount Garfield Bouldering

4 boulder problems · clastic (Mancos Shale, with shale, sandstone (minor)) · 4,866 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

How well located

Base placed (one source) 1  Position on wall known 3 

Rock, from the geologic map

Mancos Shale — clastic; shale; sandstone (minor). Late Cretaceous, about 91 to 75 million years old.

Dark-gray to black soft shale; thin sandstone beds at various horizons. Upper beds intertongue with, and grade vertically into Castlegate Sandstone and Blackhawk Formation.

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Day and others, 1999, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-0427). 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. 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 1956

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1956. 12 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1956 USGS sheet covering Mount Garfield Bouldering
USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Grand Junction, CO 1956 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1956 · 1:250,000 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, 1956 to 1981: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Grand Junction Area 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 palisades, Alpine Pass, Colorado
The palisades, Alpine Pass, Colorado · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1899 · photochrom
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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The Palisades, Canyon Rio de Las Animas, Colo., U.S.A. · 1900 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Grand River Valley, Palisade, Colo. · McClure, Louis Charles, 1867-1957 · 1908
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Grand River Valley and its peach orchards, N.N.W., Palisade, Colo. · Underwood and Underwood · 1910 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Grand River Valley from the Mesa, South of Palisade, Colo. · Underwood and Underwood · 1910 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Picking luscious peaches on Yankee Fruit Ranch, Palisade Colo. · Underwood and Underwood · 1910 · stereograph
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.

Mt Garfield
Mt Garfield · Andrew Kearns · 2025 · 1,181 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Mesa County, CO, USA - panoramio · Loco Steve · 2012 · 1,094 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Leucosticte atrata at high bird bath · Jimmy Thomas from Grand Junction · 2009 · 1,463 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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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
Wall direction not known yet.
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 39.12170 N, 108.38120 W (Mount Garfield Bouldering). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by COLORADO DEPT OF HIGHWAYS (state), in Unknown Open Space.

The boundary is close. Land managed by Bureau of Land Management 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.

Nobody has yet read COLORADO DEPT OF HIGHWAYS'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

Mapped parking
731 m away (map)
Campsite
Basecamp Palisade RV Resort, 4,674 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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