Deep Cut Guide

Putnam Basin Boulders

10 boulder problems · arkose (Cutler Fm, with siltstone, conglomerate) · 11,479 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

V1 to V6, mostly around V3.

  1. 1 V1
  2. 1 V2
  3. 4 V3
  4. 1 V4
  5. 2 V5
  6. 1 V6

Counted from the 10 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 2  Crag only 8 

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

Cutler Fm (Cutler Formation) — arkose, siltstone, conglomerate, minor clastic. Permian, about 299 to 269 million years old.

Arkosic sandstone, siltstone, and conglomerate

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:500,000 sheet (Horton and others, 2017, U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 1052). 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 500 m wide on the ground, so the wall itself may be the neighbouring unit. Every crag on this unit: Cutler Fm. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1897

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1897. 30 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1897 USGS sheet covering Putnam Basin Boulders
USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Silverton, CO 1897 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1897 · 1:62,500 sheet
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, 1897 to 1982: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Durango 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.

Sheepherder near Durango, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1939
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item

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

Durango, Colorado. Residential district · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1940
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item

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

Locomotives in roundhouse. Durango. Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1940
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item

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

Railroad yards. Durango, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1940
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item

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

Residential district of Durango, Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1940
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item

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

Residential district of Durango, Colorado. Durango is trading, shipping and distribution center of southwestern Colorado · Lee, Russell, 1903-1986 · 1940
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item

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

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 N (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 17° above horizontal, so the sun has to climb well clear of the rim before it reaches this wall.
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 37.77827 N, 107.73188 W (Putnam Basin Boulders). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by San Juan 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.

Nobody has yet read San Juan National Forest'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

Campsite
Little Molas Lake Campground, 4,209 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.