How sure are we?

Why most routes say "Crag only"

The open route catalogue gives most routes the crag's map point, not their own. When we measured it on 2026-09-28, 30,060 Colorado routes shared just 4,373 points. A site that dropped a pin on each of those would look precise and send you to the wrong line. So we label those pins as the crag and rely on what does find a route: its order along the wall (from a guidebook, or from the catalogue where no book covers the crag), a line drawn on a photo (OpenStreetMap), and GPS points from climbers standing at the base.

How sources are matched

• A guidebook or OSM route is matched to a catalogue route only at the same crag and with a near-identical name. When two names are nearly as close as each other, we don't match either.
• When a guidebook and the catalogue name the same climb at the same crag but grade it differently, that's one climb with two opinions about it, not two climbs. We keep it as one route, show the catalogue's grade, and say on the route's page what the book prints instead. (A crag often carries the same line twice under near-identical names — a route and its extension, say — so where one of those is graded as the book says, the page names it: the book may be describing that climb rather than this one.) An OSM line whose grade disagrees is left unmatched instead, because it carries a position, and putting a position on the wrong route is worse than leaving it off.
• An "I'm at the base" survey averages the phone's GPS for 30 s. A careful survey (5 or more fixes, ±10 m or better) places the route on its own. A second phone within 15 m verifies it. Phones that disagree hold the route back until someone resolves it.
• Between two located routes on the same wall, the routes listed in between get an estimated base, spaced by their order. Its ± radius is the worse neighbour's plus one average route spacing. We never estimate beyond the last located route.
• Route order comes from a guidebook where one covers the crag, and otherwise from the open catalogue, which records each climb's position along its wall. Each route's page says which. We never mix the two at one crag: a book numbers its routes from 1 and the catalogue from 0, so filling a book's gaps from the catalogue would produce a sequence neither source states. Where a book covers a crag, the book's order is used for the whole crag.
• A big cliff is usually several walls, and an order only means anything along one of them. Where the catalogue names the walls — Redgarden's Tower One and S Buttress, or the individual boulders at Nine Mile Hill — each wall gets its own numbering, and “next route right” never crosses from one to another. Where two walls at one crag carry the same name, we leave both unordered rather than guess which is which.
• Every point shows its ± radius. Phone GPS at a cliff base is usually off by 5-20 m, because the rock hides half the sky. So navigation switches to the order along the wall once GPS can't tell neighbours apart.
• Two independent points within 25 m of each other make a route Base verified.
• Things near a crag are matched to its map point as a straight line, and the page says the distance: an RTD stop within 1.5 km, a county climber-access trail within 400 m (the nearest vertex of the segment), a mapped toilet within 2 km, a campsite within 5 km, mapped parking within 1 km. The point itself can be hundreds of metres from the rock, so none of these is "at the crag".
• "How did the grade feel?" on a route page is a relative answer -- harder, about right, easier -- against the posted grade, never a re-grade. It is never pre-filled, a device's later answer replaces its earlier one, and nothing shows until three devices have answered. The posted grade stays exactly as its source states it; the answers sit beside it as what climbers said.
• Elevation is the crag's map point asked of the USGS point service once, monthly. Rock type is the guidebook's where one says, else OpenStreetMap's tag, else the area's public geology, else the geologic map unit at the crag's own point (Macrostrat, serving USGS and state maps); the crag page names which, and the search filter groups it into five families. The map unit is read at the point, from the most detailed sheet there; a contact line is about 100 m wide on the ground at 1:100,000 and about 500 m at 1:500,000, so the wall can be the neighbouring unit, and the card says so.

Climbs that only a guidebook lists

Most of what you see here starts from an open, freely licensed route catalogue, with guidebook facts added on top. But a guidebook is a source in its own right, and some walls it describes have never been entered into that catalogue at all. Rather than act as though those climbs don't exist, we publish them on the book's word and say so: 18 routes, including 3 whole crags, currently come from a cited guidebook alone. They carry Guidebook as their only source, and the crag page names the book and page they came from.

What we take from a book is facts and nothing else: which climbs are on a wall and in what order, their grade, length and bolt count, each cited to its page. The route descriptions, the topo drawings and the author's judgement about which climbs are worth your day all stay in the book, which is why every page that cites one links to where you can buy it. Where a crag here shows a photograph with routes drawn on it, that drawing is not the book's: it is our own photograph, drawn from the wall by a person who went and stood in front of it, and the caption says who and when.

What the route facts mean

A grade like 5.10a or V4 answers one question: how hard are the moves. It doesn't say whether the gear is good, how long the approach is, or how many pitches you're committing to. We show those as their own separate facts rather than folding them into the grade, and here's exactly what each one means:

No rating shown means the route doesn't carry one in the open catalogue we build from — not a claim that it's well-protected. Pitches, length and bolts are counts straight from the catalogue or a cited guidebook; we don't infer or round them. Approach time is for the crag as a whole, not the individual route — routes at the same crag can have very different walks-in from the parking area to the base.

What's in this build

Built 2026-11-11T11:27:44+00:00: 20,722 routes and 9,367 boulder problems at 2,256 crags. points outside colorado: 27; facts files unchecked: 14; facts routes matched: 112; facts routes from book: 18; facts routes grade conflict: 2; crags from book: 3; order rows loaded: 25701; order routes from catalogue: 25567; order crags ordered: 1858; order routes unplaceable subarea: 28; order crags split into walls: 228; order walls named: 2516; order crags skipped guidebook wins: 14; osm routes: 69; osm routes matched: 57; osm routes unmatched: 12; crags facing from dem: 1235; crags within transit: 255; transit stops loaded: 8155; crags with elevation: 2253; crags with manager: 1870; crags manager on boundary: 457; crags manager access flagged: 69; crags manager unmapped: 383; crags manager not checked: 3; distinct managers: 68; trail segments loaded: 27; crags with approach trail: 63; amenities loaded: 52762; crags with camp nearby: 1517; crags with parking nearby: 1289; crags with toilet nearby: 1174; crags rock from area: 877; crags with geology: 2246; crags rock from macrostrat: 1372; crags geology large scale: 982; routes on subarea point: 10649; routes interpolated: 11; facts routes maybe dup of unnamed: 3; routes with ratings: 18038; topo sheets loaded: 5047; crags on the map: 2253; archive photos place indexed: 331; archive photos by name: 115; archive open photos: 14306; archive items: 6513; archive topo: 2427; archive photo: 429; archive featured: 1344; archive open photo: 3651; archive text: 6; archive checked: 6; topos files loaded: 0; topos files invalid: 0; topos files crag absent: 0; topos photos: 0; topos lines: 0; topos routes drawn: 0.