Deep cuts
Every other climbing site tells you about the rock as it is today. This is the rest of it: what the rock is and how old, who first mapped the ground you park on, what was written about these places before anyone climbed here, and what they looked like a century ago.
All of it is public domain or openly licensed, taken from the institutions that hold it, and every item on the site names its holder, its licence and a link back to the record. Counted from the current build, not typed in.
What the rock is
The geologic map unit under 2,246 of 2,256 crags, read at each crag's own map point: 180 distinct units, from the Fountain Formation the Flatirons are cut from to the Pikes Peak Batholith under Turkey Rocks.
- Rocks of Pikes Peak Batholith (1000-m.y. age group) — 220 crags, mesoproterozoic
- Granitic rocks of 1700-m.y. age group — 150 crags, paleoproterozoic
- Granitic rocks of 1400-m.y. age group — 143 crags, mesoproterozoic
- Silver Plume Granite — 94 crags, mesoproterozoic
- Fountain Formation — 90 crags, paleozoic
- Biotitic gneiss, schist, and migmatite — 85 crags, paleoproterozoic
- Boulder Creek Granodiorite — 67 crags, paleoproterozoic
- Dakota Sandstone and Burro Canyon Fm — 51 crags, cretaceous
- Dakota Group — 49 crags, albian
- Pikes Peak Granite — 42 crags, mesoproterozoic
- Elephant Rock Granite — 41 crags, mesoproterozoic
- Felsic gneiss — 41 crags, paleoproterozoic
On the map since 1885
The U.S. Geological Survey has been drawing this ground since the 1880s, and every sheet it ever printed is public domain. 2,253 crags sit inside at least one historical sheet; the oldest over any of them is USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for East Tavaputs, UT 1885. Each crag page names its own oldest sheet.
What it looked like
The oldest photographs of these places the Library of Congress holds, of the 429 on the site. Shown from the Library, never copied here. A further 3,651 openly licensed photographs sit on crag pages, found by coordinates within 1.5 km of a crag's map point and shown nearest first.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What was written
6 books and atlases about these places, free to read because they are public domain or government work — Chapin climbing the peaks about Estes Park in 1889, the Park Service's own mountaineering guide from 1919, Hayden's 1877 geologic atlas.
Where there is most to find
- Leadville — 23 archival items
- Georgetown — 22 archival items
- San Luis Valley — 22 archival items
- Boulder — 15 archival items
- Fort Collins — 15 archival items
- Montrose — 15 archival items
How this is put together
Two paths, and every item says which it took. A sheet, a map unit or a photograph with coordinates on it is attached by those coordinates, which is a fact; photographs found that way are shown nearest first, with the distance under each one. A photograph or a page attached by a place's name can be wrong — names repeat, and a search for a canyon in Colorado can return one in Nevada. Those items say found by place name, not yet checked, and anyone can report one, which hides it at once, everywhere it appears. Where the holding institution's own catalogue indexes an item to the place, the item says that instead.
We copy only what is public domain or openly licensed, never anything marked non-commercial or no-derivatives, and we judge that per item rather than per collection. Several archives are linked and never copied. Sources & licences lists all of them; How sure are we? has the rest of the method.