Deep Cut Guide

The Needles

12 routes · quartzite (Uncompahgre Fm, with slate, phyllite) · 11,643 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.2 to 5.11, with no single grade dominating.

  1. 1 5.2
  2. 2 5.7
  3. 1 5.8
  4. 2 5.9
  5. 1 5.10
  6. 1 5.11

Counted from the 8 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) 3  Position on wall known 5  Crag only 4 

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Northeast Ridge, South Ridge (2 climbs, about 60 seconds on Snowdon Peak) would place up to 3 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

Uncompahgre Fm (Uncompahgre Formation) — quartzite, slate, phyllite. Statherian, about 1,660 to 1,610 million years old.

Quartzite, slate, and phyllite

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

On the map since 1900

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1900. 25 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1900 USGS sheet covering The Needles
USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Needle Mountains, CO 1900 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1900 · 1:62,500 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, 1900 to 1982: 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

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
In shade all day
Wall faces N (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Deep terrain: the skyline averages 23° 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 36°/28° · 0.0 mm · 8 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 34°/25° · 0.0 mm · 8 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 38°/22° · 0.0 mm · 9 mph · pm storms 1%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 18:43 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 37.71280 N, 107.69310 W (The Needles). 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 wilderness 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
Unnamed, 3,640 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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