Deep Cut Guide

West of Rustic

105 routes and 352 boulder problems · granite and gneiss · 8,107 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.8 to 5.14, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 6 5.8
  2. 1 5.9
  3. 20 5.10
  4. 27 5.11
  5. 28 5.12
  6. 21 5.13
  7. 2 5.14

VB to V14, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 2 VB
  2. 12 V0
  3. 19 V1
  4. 28 V2
  5. 40 V3
  6. 41 V4
  7. 42 V5
  8. 33 V6
  9. 34 V7
  10. 43 V8
  11. 31 V9
  12. 12 V10
  13. 7 V11
  14. 4 V12
  15. 2 V13
  16. 2 V14

Counted from the 457 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

Base placed (one source) 42  Position on wall known 293  Crag only 122 

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Poison Swoop, Wicked Pissah (2 climbs, about 60 seconds on Orange Wall) would place up to 11 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.

The guidebook for this area

Colorado Bouldering: Front Range - Phillip Benningfield, Matt Samet - 2020 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.

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

Talus deposits — colluvium. Quaternary, younger than 781,000 years.

Large angular boulders and smaller rock fragments deposited chiefly by rock and snow avalanche, rock fall, rock slide, and debris flow at the base of cliffs and steep slopes where debris forms aprons, cones, and fan-shaped deposits. Unit locally includes rubbly scree deposits and probably tills of Holocene age near cirque headwalls (for example, Benedict, 1973a; Benson and others, 2007). Much of the talus in glaciated valleys and cirques postdates the retreat of Pinedale ice. Unit Qta is mapped chiefly in alpine and subalpine areas along the crest of the Medicine Bow Mountains and Never Summer Mountains, and in the upper part of the Cache la Poudre River valley upstream of Kinikinik. Small talus deposits adjacent or surrounded by colluvium (Qc) are mapped as colluvium. Estimated thickness is 3–15 m

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: Talus deposits. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1916

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1916. 19 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1916 USGS sheet covering West of Rustic
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Home, CO 1916 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1916 · 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, 1916 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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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

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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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

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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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

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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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

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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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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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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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

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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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

3 more at the Library of Congress.

Routes

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.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 21° 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
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 52°/32° · 0.0 mm · 13 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 55°/31° · 0.0 mm · 8 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 56°/36° · 0.0 mm · 8 mph · pm storms 0%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 15:40 UTC

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 40.66546 N, 105.80801 W (West of Rustic). 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 wild and scenic river, 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
104 m away (map)
Mapped parking
115 m away (map)
Campsite
Sleeping Elephant Campground, 3,489 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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