Deep Cut Guide

Palisade Rim Trail (Pictograph Trail)

1 route · Mount Garfield Formation and Sego Sandstone of the Mesaverde Group · 4,839 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

How well located

Crag only 1 

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

Mount Garfield Formation and Sego Sandstone of the Mesaverde Group (Mount Garfield Formation, Sego Sandstone) — clastic; sandstone; shale; coal. Late Cretaceous, about 75 to 66 million years old.

Mount Garfield Formation: buff and gray fine- to medium-grained sandstone and gray shale. Upper part contains very little coal. Lower part contains thick persistent coal beds. Rollins Sandstone member occurs in coal-bearing sequence. Sego Sandstone: buff and light-gray fine-grained sandstone and gray shale.

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: Mount Garfield Formation and Sego Sandstone of the Mesaverde Group. 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. 15 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1956 USGS sheet covering Palisade Rim Trail (Pictograph Trail)
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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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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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.

Debeque Canyon from Palisade Rims (13048663143)
Debeque Canyon from Palisade Rims (13048663143) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 115 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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California Zephyr (13048535995) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 115 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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California Zephyr (13048855684) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 115 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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California Zephyr into Debeque Canyon (13048977854) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 115 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Palisade Rims (13931725491) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 272 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Palisade Rims (13931737722) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 272 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Palisade Rims (13954839915) · jimmy thomas from Seattle · 2014 · 272 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
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'Mount Garfield' From The California Zephyr - panoramio · Loco Steve · 2012 · 716 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Roller dam from California ZephyrRoller dam ( Press L on your Keyboard to view large on Black ) When travelling on the i · Loco Steve · 2010 · 1,388 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · 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
In shade all day
Wall faces SW (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 38° above horizontal, so the sun has to climb well clear of the rim before it reaches this wall.
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 39.11817 N, 108.31522 W (Palisade Rim Trail (Pictograph Trail)). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Bureau of Land Management (federal), in Grand Junction Field Office.

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 Bureau of Land Management land

Fees
Developed campgrounds are fee sites: at Shelf Road, Sand Gulch is $20 a night for an individual site and $40 for a group site, with no drinking water, hook-ups or trash service. Where a fee area is posted, you must register and pay within 30 minutes of entering it.
Overnight
Camping more than 14 days in any 30-day period at any one location is prohibited, including in a campground, and afterwards you must move at least 30 air miles. Personal property may not be left unattended anywhere on public land for more than 48 hours.

Read on Bureau of Land Management'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

Mapped parking
376 m away (map)
Campsite
Basecamp Palisade RV Resort, 1,248 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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