Sources & licences

Where every fact on this site comes from, and what each source lets us do with it.

Source	What we take	Licence	How we use it
OpenBeta	The route catalogue: names, grades, types, first ascents, crag hierarchy, order along the wall	CC0 (public domain)	Imported nightly from their Parquet export (current copy: 2026-11-11). We don't import descriptions: the text was written by Mountain Project users. Order along the wall isn't in the Parquet export, so it comes from their API instead, and is used only where no guidebook covers the crag.
OpenBeta ratings	Star averages and vote counts per route	CC0	A fixed snapshot from 2021-02-07, averaged per route. The raw average and vote count are always shown, however few; ranking uses a version pulled toward the catalogue-wide average in proportion to how few votes there are, so a single vote can't outrank a route hundreds of people rated. No individual rater is shown. The same join gives each route a direct Mountain Project link.
OpenStreetMap / OpenClimbing	Route base points, crag outlines, wall direction, lines drawn on photos; and, per crag, the nearest mapped toilet, campsite and parking	ODbL	Weekly extract. Anything derived from OSM stays open under ODbL, and our on-site GPS points go back to OSM after a person reviews them.
Wikimedia Commons	Wall photos behind topo lines, and openly licensed photographs taken within 1.5 km of a crag's map point	Per photo. We take only CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA — never NonCommercial, and never NoDerivatives, since we resize	Shown from Commons with the author and licence under each photo. The nearby ones are found by coordinates, so they say where the camera was and not what it was pointed at; the page says so, and anyone can report one.
Guidebooks	Facts only: order along the wall, grade, pitches, length, bolts, FA year, page	The book is the author's copyright. The facts in it aren't (Feist v. Rural, 1991).	Every fact is cited to its book and page with a link to buy it. We never copy descriptions, topo drawings or photos. A second person checks each facts file against the book before it publishes. Authors who license us more content are credited as such.
Our own photo topos	Photographs of a wall with each route drawn on it and numbered	CC BY-SA 4.0, ours to give	Taken and drawn by a named person, who says on the page which day they drew them. The lines come from the wall itself and from notes made at the crag — never traced from a guidebook's topo or anyone else's photograph, which would be copying the very thing we don't take from books. The line format is OpenStreetMap's `wikimedia_commons:path`, stored exactly as OSM writes it, so the photographs and the drawings can go to Wikimedia Commons and OSM and be used far from here. The picture and the lines are CC BY-SA; the OSM tags that point at them are ODbL.
Climbers on site	Photos of the rock	Published with the uploader's permission, given when they send it	Checked automatically before publishing: the photo must carry camera information and a location within 500 m of the crag or one of its routes, and a page of printed text is refused because guidebook pages and topos are the author's work. Nobody reviews them beyond that, so anyone can report a photo and it is hidden immediately — use the “Report this photo” link under it. That includes the photographer of a picture someone else uploaded. We keep the location and the date the camera recorded, and throw the rest of the metadata away by re-encoding the image.
Climbers on site	"I'm at the base" GPS surveys	Contributed to the commons (we'll pass them to OSM)	The phone averages its GPS for 30 s at the start of the route. A careful survey (5+ fixes, ±10 m or better) places the route. A second phone agreeing within 15 m verifies it. Phones that disagree are held back, not averaged. We don't store accounts, IPs or user agents.
USGS 3D Elevation Program	Which way each wall faces	Public domain	Worked out from the steepest ground near the crag, and used only when no guidebook or OpenStreetMap entry says. A crag with no single clear face (a tower, a boulder field) gets no answer.
Open-Meteo	Recent rain, 3-day forecast, the hourly chance of precipitation behind "pm storms"	CC BY 4.0	Fetched every few hours. Anything older than 12 h isn't shown. The storm figure is their probability for the crag's point, the noon-to-six maximum, said as a chance and never as "dry".
USGS Elevation Point Query Service	The elevation of each crag's map point	Public domain	One query per crag, monthly. It is the point's elevation, not the wall's top, and the page says which.
Jefferson County Open Space	Trail segments the county flags as climber access: name, mileage, difficulty, pets	Public GIS	Monthly. A crag within 400 m of such a segment names it and draws it on the navigation map; where you leave the trail for the base is the guidebook's to say. The county's alert feed also seeds closure drafts a person then checks.
RTD	Bus and rail stops (GTFS)	Open data	Monthly. A crag within 1.5 km of a stop, straight-line, is on car-free crags. Never a timetable.
Boulder OSMP climbing formations and closures	Named formations, which get seasonal closures, and the closures in force	CC0	Weekly. Feeds closure drafts only: nothing publishes until a person has read OSMP's page and signed the entry.
Land managers (NPS, Colorado Parks & Wildlife, Boulder OSMP, USFS)	Raptor and seasonal closures	Public notices	A person reads the notice and records it with its link and the date they checked. Only checked entries are shown. Full list: Closures.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs	Archival photographs of these places from before 1970: the image, its title, who made it, when, and the Library's rights statement	Per item. We take only items the Library itself marks “No known restrictions on publication”	Monthly, one search per area and region against the Library's Colorado index. Each photo is shown from the Library's own servers, never copied here, and says how it was attached: the Library's catalogue indexed it to this place, or only the place's name appeared in its title — names repeat, so that one is labelled unchecked and anyone can report it, which hides it at once.
Macrostrat (USGS and Colorado Geological Survey geologic maps)	The geologic map unit at each crag's point: name, lithology, the map's description, age, which sheet	CC BY 4.0	Monthly, one query per crag point at the most detailed sheet available. Fills the rock type only where no guidebook, OSM tag or area entry says; always shown on its own card as the map's answer about the point, with the sheet cited. The geology overlay on maps is Macrostrat's tiles, loaded from them.
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection	Every historical sheet whose extent contains a crag's map point: title, year, scale, thumbnail, the georeferenced file	Public domain	Monthly, by 7.5-minute cell. The crag page shows the oldest sheet and links to all of them. The thumbnail is loaded from the USGS, not copied here. Anyone can report an item and it is hidden at once.
Mountain Project, theCrag	Nothing	Their terms don't allow reuse	We link to them from every route.