Deep Cut Guide

Cactus Cliff

157 routes · limestone · 6,939 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.5 to 5.14, mostly around 5.10.

  1. 1 5.5
  2. 4 5.7
  3. 7 5.8
  4. 20 5.9
  5. 60 5.10
  6. 33 5.11
  7. 28 5.12
  8. 3 5.13
  9. 1 5.14

Counted from the 157 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 157 

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 Spray Lord, Unnamed (aka Slab n' Vein), Blackman's Burden, Super Suka, Red Giant, Blade Runner, Fiscal Cliff, Variation: Sabbath Bloody Slabbath, Critic's Choice, Total Recount, New World Order, Morning Joe, Whiteman's Burden, Bionic Minnow (14 climbs, about 420 seconds) would place up to 143 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.

The guidebook for this area

Shelf Road Rock - Rick Thompson - 3rd ed. every crag it covers

From the publisher

The book has the topos, the descriptions and the local knowledge this page can't. Buying it helps support the people who know the crag best.

Rock, from the geologic map

Granitic rocks of 1700-m.y. age group (Boulder Creek Granite, Cross Creek Granite, Denny Creek Granodiorite, Kroenke Granodiorite, Browns Pass Quartz Monzonite, Powderhorn Granite, Pitts Meadow Granodiorite, Bakers Bridge Granite, Tenmile Granite) — granite, minor granodiorite, quartz monzonite. Statherian, about 1,730 to 1,660 million years old.

Includes Boulder Creek -M.Y. AGE GROUP (AGE 1650-1730 M.Y.)--Includes Boulder Creek, Cross Creek, Denny Creek, Kroenke, Browns Pass, Powderhorn, Pitts Meadow, Bakers Bridge, and Tenmile Granites, Quartz Monzonites, or Granodiorites; also, unnamed granitic 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. 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: Granitic rocks of 1700-m.y. age group. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1894

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1894. 26 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1894 USGS sheet covering Cactus Cliff
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Pikes Peak, CO 1894 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1894 · 1:125,000 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, 1894 to 1989: 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.

Cañon of the Arkansas, Cañon City, Colo.
Cañon of the Arkansas, Cañon City, Colo. · 1901 · stereograph
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.

Canon City, Colo. · Sawdey, E. F. · 1909
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.

Panorama of Canon City, Colo. · Haines Photo Co. (Conneaut, Ohio) · 1915
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

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 09:40-16:20
Wall faces SW (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Partly enclosed: the skyline averages 8° above horizontal.
Crags by sun and shade →
Rain & forecast
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 58°/36° · 0.0 mm · 18 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 56°/36° · 0.0 mm · 15 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 56°/37° · 0.0 mm · 12 mph · pm storms 0%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 15:40 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 38.63213 N, 105.22238 W (Cactus Cliff). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Bureau of Land Management (federal), in Royal Gorge Field Office.

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.

Rules for all Bureau of Land Management land

Fees
Developed campgrounds are fee sites: at Shelf Road, Sand Gulch is $20 a night for an individual site and $40 for a group site, with no drinking water, hook-ups or trash service. Where a fee area is posted, you must register and pay within 30 minutes of entering it.
Overnight
Camping more than 14 days in any 30-day period at any one location is prohibited, including in a campground, and afterwards you must move at least 30 air miles. Personal property may not be left unattended anywhere on public land for more than 48 hours.

Read on Bureau of Land Management'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

Toilets
137 m away (map)
Mapped parking
575 m away (map)
Campsite
Banks Campground Group Site, 499 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.