PHOTOS: Locals take advantage of historic Aspen climbing
Beau Toepfer/The Aspen Times
Gold Butte, a climbing crag about 10 minutes drive from downtown Aspen on McLain Flats Road, was developed starting in the 1960s by prolific climber Harvey Carter.
The crag is now owned and managed by Pitkin County Open Space and Trails. The rock is Entrada Sandstone, formed over 140 million years ago in shallow sea and desert environments. The crag has bolted anchors, many of which are accessible from the top of the formation, making for safe and accessible top-roping, as well as traditional and sport lead climbing. The south and southeast facing cliffs make the cliff a winter climbing destination, as the sun makes the rock warm and dry enough to climb even in the middle of the winter.
Carter, the climber who pioneered the earliest climbing at Gold Butte, was a Colorado Springs-based climber who put up routes in the beginning of Colorado’s climbing era. His routes are often easy to recognize by their old, rusty pitons and their “sandbagged” climbing grades. When Carter was climbing, the hardest grade was 5.9 (the scale now goes to hard 5.15). Carter would grade routes at a max difficulty of 5.9 when they were much harder, and those historic grades have stuck around.
