Deep Cut Guide

Tombstone Wall

1 route · Felsic and hornblendic gneisses, either separate or interlayered · 8,726 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.

Rock, from the geologic map

Felsic and hornblendic gneisses, either separate or interlayered — gneiss, minor metabasalt, metagraywacke. Paleoproterozoic, about 2,500 to 1,600 million years old.

Includes metabasalt, metatuff, and interbedded metagraywacke; locally contains interlayered biotite gneiss. Derived principally from volcanic 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: Felsic and hornblendic gneisses, either separate or interlayered. 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. 24 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1889 USGS sheet covering Tombstone Wall
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Canon City, 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 1994: USGS topoView.

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.

[The Royal Gorge, Colo.]
[The Royal Gorge, Colo.] · Detroit Publishing Co. · 1880
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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[The Royal Gorge, Colo.] · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1880
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.

Royal Gorge, Colorado · 1890 · postcard
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.

Royal Gorge, Colorado, U. S. A. · American Stereoscopic Co · 1896 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Royal Gorge, Can[y]on of the Arkansas, Colorado · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1898 · photochrom
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Approaching the Royal Gorge, Colorado · International View Co. · 1900 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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Royal Gorge, Colorado · International View Co. · 1900 · stereograph
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
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[In the Royal Gorge, Rio Grande Southern Railway] · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1900
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Sunset in the Royal Gorge, Col. · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1901
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Royal Gorge · 1904 · postcard
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.

13 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.

Hardscrabble Canyon
Hardscrabble Canyon · Jeffrey Beall · 2023 · 351 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Junction of Colorado state highways 96 and 165 · Jeffrey Beall · 2023 · 386 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Colorado State Highway 165 northern terminus · Jeffrey Beall · 2023 · 358 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Roadcut at McKenzie Junction, Colorado · Jeffrey Beall · 2023 · 364 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 07:30-14:00
Wall faces SE (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Partly enclosed: the skyline averages 9° above horizontal.
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 38.16700 N, 105.19270 W (Tombstone Wall). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

We don't know who manages this ground: PAD-US doesn't map this point as protected land, which most often means it is private. Find out whose it is before you go.

Nobody has yet read the land manager'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.

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