Deep Cut Guide

The Crumbling Castle

1 route · granite and gneiss · 5,722 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.

The guidebook for this area

Colorado Bouldering: Front Range - Phillip Benningfield, Matt Samet - 2020 every crag it covers

From the publisherBookshop.org

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Poudre Canyon Rock Climbing Guide - Bennett Scott - 3rd ed. every crag it covers

From the publisherBookshop.org

Bookshop.org links are affiliate links: if you buy through one we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop.org gives its profits to independent bookshops.

The book has the topos, the descriptions and the local knowledge this page can't. Buying it helps support the people who know the crag best.

Rock, from the geologic map

Knotted mica schist — schist. Paleoproterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,600 million years old.

Biotite-rich schist that displays 3‒10 mm porphyroblasts or clots of metamorphic minerals that exhibit a lumpy or knotted outcrop appearance. Contains interbedded quartzofeldspathic mica schist (Xbq) and sparse, thin beds of granule-sized metaconglomerate

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Workman and others, 2018, U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3399). 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: Knotted mica schist. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1907

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1907. 17 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1907 USGS sheet covering The Crumbling Castle
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Livermore, CO 1907 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1907 · 1:125,000 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, 1907 to 1980: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Fort Collins 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.

After the Explosion of a Ten-Ton Blast above Fort, Collins, Colorado
After the Explosion of a Ten-Ton Blast above Fort, Collins, Colorado · Keystone View Company · 1908 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Big Thompson Canyon. Loveland, Fort Collins and Estes Park Road, Estes Park, Colo. · 1908 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Exploding a Ten-Ton Blast above Fort Collins, Colorado · Keystone View Company · 1908 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Junction of Loveland and Fort Collins Road, Estes Park, Colo. · 1908 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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14 year old Henry in the fourth grade of the Rockwood Place School. He is four grades behind, and the teacher says it is on account of the beet work. Location: Fort Collins, Colorado · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Girls - one 14 years and two 12 years old in the third grade of the Rockwood Place School. Some children 7 and 8 years old in this grade. Regular age is 8 and 9. Teacher says retardation is due chiefl · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Views of "The Jungle," in Ft. Collins, the section in which the beet workers live when not away working the beets. In Greeley, this segregated section is called "The Pansy Bed" (from the varied and vi · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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[Views of "The Jungle," in Ft. Collins, the section in which the beet workers live when not away working the beets. In Greeley, this segregated section is called "The Pansy Bed" (from the varied and v · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

[Views of "The Jungle," in Ft. Collins, the section in which the beet workers live when not away working the beets. In Greeley, this segregated section is called "The Pansy Bed" (from the varied and v · Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 · 1915
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Harvesting barley with combined harvester and threshing machine drawn by tractor, near Fort Collins, Colo. · Keystone View Company. · 1919 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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3 more at the Library of Congress.

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.

Poudre Park, Colorado
Poudre Park, Colorado · Jeffrey Beall · 2017 · 468 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Fall colors, Poudre Canyon · Charles Willgren from Fort Collins, Colorado, United States · 2008 · 679 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Poudre Canyon, Greyrock trail · Charles Willgren from Fort Collins, Colorado, United States · 2008 · 727 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
sun 08:20-11:10
Wall faces E (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 22° 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 40.69358 N, 105.28975 W (The Crumbling Castle). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Roosevelt National Forest (federal). It lies inside inventoried roadless 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.

Nearby, from OpenStreetMap

Toilets
1,798 m away (map)
Mapped parking
504 m away (map)
Campsite
Unnamed, 1,115 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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