Estes Park Valley

1,326 routes and 118 boulder problems at 112 crags. "Estes Park Valley" is the catalogue's own grouping — a town, a canyon or a corridor, whichever climbers actually say.

Which way a wall faces is known for 92 of these 112; the rest say nothing rather than guess. Sun and shade by season ranks the ones we know.

At a glance

Seasonal closures ahead: Lumpy Ridge raptor nesting closures (02-15 to 07-31) — closures.

Crags sit between 5,322 and 10,015 ft (elevation known for 112 of 112).
Rock, where known (104 of 112 crags): granite (76), gneiss, schist & quartzite (28).
Mapped geology under these crags (112 of 112 read off the geologic map): silver plume granite (72), tonalite, metasedimentary rocks (14), quartzofeldspathic schist and gneiss interbedded with mica schist and gneiss (7) and 6 more units.
The USGS has mapped this ground since 1902; each crag page shows its oldest sheet.
2 crags within a walk of an RTD stop. Mapped toilets within 2 km of 68.
Sun and shade:

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
The story of Estes Park · Enos A. Mills · 1914

Mills, the Longs Peak innkeeper and guide who pushed the park into being, on the valley's people and peaks. Published from his own inn at the foot of Longs Peak.

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
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, each opened and signed by a person. The whole shelf is in the reading room.

From the archives

Photographs of Estes Park Valley held by the Library of Congress, oldest first, each marked "no known restrictions on publication" by the Library. Shown from their servers, not copied here.

Big Thompson Canyon. Loveland, Fort Collins and Estes Park Road, Estes Park, Colo. · 1908 · postcard
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked

Report this item