Deep Cut Guide

County Seat

16 boulder problems · Dakota Group · 6,468 ft

Take me there Routes ↓ Directions

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

VB to V7, but over half of these boulder problems are VB.

  1. 8 VB
  2. 3 V0
  3. 2 V3
  4. 1 V6
  5. 2 V7

Counted from the 16 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 15  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.

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Fence Line, Unknown Face Problem Right, Step Aerobics (3 climbs, about 90 seconds) would place up to 12 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

Dakota Group (South Platte Formation, Lytle Formation). Mesozoic, about 145 to 100 million years old.

Consists of South Platte Formation and underlying Lytle Formation. South Platte Formation contains two or three yellowish-gray, well-sorted, cross-stratified, porous, fine- to medium-grained quartz sandstone sequences separated by dark-gray, silty, hard, locally carbonaceous shale, interbedded with thin quartz sandstone beds and gray to white refractory clay or porcellanite layers [see Bryant and others (1973) for more detailed description of members of South Platte Formation]. The South Platte is about 67 m thick. Lytle Formation consists of yellowish-gray, medium- to fine-grained sandstone and conglomerate; locally contains reddish iron stain. Well-rounded clasts in conglomerate composed of quartz, quartzite, chert, and some petrified wood; conglomerate generally near base of unit. The Lytle is about 24 m thick. In Fraser basin, combined thickness about 75 m (Taylor, 1975)

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Kellogg and others, 2008, USGS Geologic Investigations Series 3000). 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. Every crag on this unit: Dakota Group. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1899

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1899. 25 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1899 USGS sheet covering County Seat
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for West Denver, CO 1899 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1899 · 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, 1899 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

  • 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

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

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.

Golden City, C.T. - looking west
Golden City, C.T. - looking west · Mathews, Alfred Edward, 1831-1874 · 1870
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Golden from Midland Trail · Wiswall Photographic Co. · 1914
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.

[Golden, CO] · Wiswall, H. Bruce · 1914
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.

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.

Waiting in the chute, Alpine Slide, HS
Waiting in the chute, Alpine Slide, HS · Charles Willgren from Fort Collins, Colorado, United States · 2008 · 1,160 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Green Mountain at Night - Flickr - Graeme Smith · Graeme Smith from Golden, Colorado · 2019 · 515 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

I-70 - panoramio (6) · Thomson M · 2016 · 570 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

I-70 - panoramio (5) · Thomson M · 2016 · 589 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

090805 I-70 Geology Road Cut (Morrison-Dakota) North - panoramio · Magrathea78 · 2009 · 593 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Mount Morrison - panoramio · Thomson M · 2016 · 597 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Park ranger truck, Jefferson County Open Space 2026-07-17 · Xnatedawgx · 2026 · 702 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Mount Morrison Colorado viewed from I-70, July 2016 · Thomson200 · 2016 · 842 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Hogback Jurassic PnR Sites sign, WML · Xnatedawgx · 2016 · 1,062 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Alpine Slide in Golden · Charles Willgren from Fort Collins, Colorado, United States · 2008 · 1,155 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Alpine Slide walkway marking · Charles Willgren from Fort Collins, Colorado, United States · 2008 · 1,178 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Early Purple Milkvetch imported from iNaturalist photo 197804110 on 9 November 2023 · (c) Jackson Irvin, some rights reserved (CC BY) · 2022 · 1,462 m from the crag's map point
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY · the record · placed by its coordinates
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

1 more on Commons.

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 07:20-11:10
Wall faces E (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Open sky in most directions.
Crags by sun and shade →
Rain & forecast
0 mm of rain in the last 48 hours.
11-11 59°/41° · 0.0 mm · 15 mph · pm storms 0% 11-12 58°/44° · 0.0 mm · 10 mph · pm storms 0% 11-13 58°/45° · 0.0 mm · 9 mph · pm storms 0%
Open-Meteo, fetched 2026-11-11 18:42 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 39.70728 N, 105.20265 W (County Seat). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Jefferson County Open Space (local government), in Tincup Ridge Property. It lies inside local conservation area.

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 Jefferson County Parks & Open Space land

Climbing permit
Installing fixed hardware on a new route requires a permit: a Fixed Hardware Application, vetted by the Fixed Hardware Review Committee before the Climbing Committee decides.
Hours
Unlawful to be on Open Space land from one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise, unless posted otherwise.
Rules
JCPOS does not install, maintain or inspect hardware related to rock climbing. Climbing ethics differ by park -- Clear Creek Canyon, the Cathedral Spires and the South Platte each have their own published guidelines.
Overnight
Camping by advance permit only, obtained online at least 24 hours ahead -- not at the park, headquarters or by phone. Only White Ranch and Reynolds Parks, tent-only.
Dogs
Dogs must be on a leash ten feet or less in length and under physical control.

Read on Jefferson County Parks & Open Space'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
817 m away (map)
Mapped parking
302 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.