Quandary Peak

7 routes · Biotitic gneiss, schist, and migmatite · 14,234 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.4 to 5.10, with no single grade dominating.

1 5.4
2 5.6
2 5.7
1 5.10

Counted from the 6 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 7

No route here has its own point yet. The map pin is the crag. At the wall? Survey it: 30 seconds per route.

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Uncle Andy, King's Crown (2 climbs, about 60 seconds) would place up to 5 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.

Rock, from the geologic map

Biotitic gneiss, schist, and migmatite — biotite gneiss, schist, migmatite, minor gneiss, calc silicate schist, marble. Paleoproterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,600 million years old.

Locally contains minor hornblende gneiss, calc-silicate rock, quartzite, and marble. Derived principally from sedimentary rocks

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: Biotitic gneiss, schist, and migmatite. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1889

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1889. 31 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1889 USGS sheet covering Quandary Peak — **USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Leadville, CO 1889** · U.S. Geological Survey · 1889 · 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, 1889 to 1983: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

1877 Geologic Map of Colorado (Hayden), high-resolution scan · F. V. Hayden; scan by the Colorado Geological Survey · 1877

The whole-state sheet of the 1877 atlas, scanned at full resolution by the state survey and free to download.

Colorado Geological Survey (publication HM-01-04) · Public domain · read it
Geological and geographical atlas of Colorado and portions of adjacent territory · F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories · 1877

The first geology anyone drew of this ground. Hayden's survey mapped the state in the 1870s; these are the sheets, with the rock units coloured as they understood them then.

Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it
Mountaineering in Colorado: the peaks about Estes Park · Frederick H. Chapin · 1889

The first book of Colorado climbing. Chapin's 1887-88 ascents of Longs Peak, Hallett, Ypsilon and the Mummy Range, with the approaches as they were before the park.

Internet Archive (Harvard University copy, Appalachian Mountain Club, Boston) · Public domain · read it
Trail and Timberline, volume 2 (1918) · Colorado Mountain Club · 1918

The Colorado Mountain Club's own magazine in its sixth year, with the club's outings and ascents as its members wrote them up at the time.

Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it
Mountaineering in the Rocky Mountain National Park · Roger W. Toll, U.S. National Park Service · 1919

The Park Service's own mountaineering guide, four years after the park was made. Peak by peak, with the routes of the day and the first recorded ascents Toll could find.

National Park Service, scan at the Internet Archive (Brigham Young University copy) · Public domain · read it

Free to read: public domain or government work. About Alpine Rock as a whole, not this wall. More in the reading room.

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.

Looking out from the Summit of Mt Quandry · brian gautreau from Colorado Springs, USA · 2010 · 46 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates

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