Deep Cut Guide

Lost Meadow Crags

3 routes · granite (Silver Plume Granite) · 10,897 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

How well located

Base placed (one source) 3 

Rock, from the geologic map

Granite of Hagues Peak — granite. Mesoproterozoic, about 1,600 to 1,000 million years old.

Tan, coarse-grained to very coarse grained, porphyritic biotite-rich monzogranite and granodiorite. Contains conspicuous flow-aligned phenocrysts of microcline 2 to 6 cm long. Color index generally 10 to 15. The granite of Hagues Peak is intruded by the granite of Longs Peak (YgLP), and yields a whole-rock Rb-Sr isochron age of approximately 1,480 Ma (Braddock and Cole, 1990). Plymate and others (2005) indicate bulk geochemistry of this unit strongly resembles the granite of the Mt. Evans batholith (exposed 100 km south of the map area) intruded at 1,442±2 Ma (U-Pb on zircon; Aleinikoff and others, 1993)

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: Granite of Hagues Peak. 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 Lost Meadow Crags
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

  • 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.

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
sun 07:20-16:00
Wall faces S (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 39° 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 40.50852 N, 105.58181 W (Lost Meadow Crags). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by National Park Service (federal), in Rocky Mountain National Park. It lies inside wilderness area, national park.

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.

Managed by
Rocky Mountain National Park
Fees
Park entrance $30/vehicle (1-day) or $70 annual pass.
Reservations
Late May to mid-October a timed-entry reservation may be needed, depending on where and when you enter (nps.gov/romo).
Overnight
Bivy permits: technical climbers only, climb of 4+ roped pitches and 3.5+ miles from the trailhead, party of 4 or fewer, all climbing. Set up at dusk, down by dawn.
County
Larimer County

Checked 2026-09-29 against source 1, source 2. Rules change: confirm with the land manager.

Rules for all Rocky Mountain National Park land

Fees
A park entrance pass is required. $30 for one private vehicle for one day, $35 for seven days, or $70 for a park-specific annual pass.
Reservations
Timed entry reservations are required 22 May to 12 October 2026, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily, and 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the Bear Lake Road corridor (to 18 October). They cover outlying areas including Longs Peak and Lumpy Ridge, not just the main road. $2 processing fee.
Permits
A timed entry reservation is separate from, and additional to, the entrance pass -- the park says a valid entrance pass is also required.

Read on Rocky Mountain National Park'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

Campsite
Happily Lost, 2,656 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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