Lumpy Ridge, CO

This past weekend, Alli was away at the trade show in Salt Lake, so I took the opportunity to meet up with my friend Matt to do something in Rocky Mountain National Park. The Petit Grepon became our objective, and after much debating about departure times (he wanted late, I wanted early), we compromised with a 5:30 rendezvous at my place in Boulder. I hoped we would be quick enough to miss the usual afternoon thunderstorms.

4:30 AM Saturday morning, Matt called me from the car. "I'll be there in 15 or 20 minutes," he said. Geez, I guess he came to his senses after all. We left the parking lot with our packs at 6:15, and marched steadily up the trail. "I've got this feeling we're forgetting something," Matt said, so we mentally checked off all the necessary equipment: shoes, harness, chalkbag, rack, rope. We planned to drop our packs at the Andrews Glacier trail junction, gear up, finish the approach, do the 5.9 route on the left side of the face, then do the regular descent off the back side of the Petit. We would then catch the Andrews Glacier trail back to our packs.

We made good time and reached the Andrews Glacier trail junction by 7:30, some 3.5 miles from the car. Emptying my pack on the ground, I stared blankly at the pile of equipment. I looked at Matt's pile next to mine. "Umm, Matt, we seem to be missing a critical piece of gear."

"What, your chalkbag?"

"Uhh, no. The ROPE!"

"Crap."

Matt had the rack; I was supposed to have the rope. Damn! How could I have forgotten it? We both really wanted to do this route. Oh well. We decided to hike up the descent trail to check it out, then hike out and do something at Lumpy. No sense crying over spilled milk. Things happen for a reason, I thought. Maybe this would turn out to be the day the Petit fell down (it didn't, by the way).

Several hours later, hoofing it up the final leg of the approach to the Book at Lumpy Ridge, I was beginning to feel pretty worked. I don't usually hike 10 miles in the morning with a full pack. And we hadn't even climbed yet!

On Matt's recommendation, we racked up at the base of Fat City. I picked the 5.8 first pitch to lead, since I knew my sport-climbing ways had left me ill-prepared for this slabby trad crack stuff. Sure enough, even the 5.8 felt insecure and hard. I was quite happy to stitch that crack full of gear.

Matt reached the belay quickly, grabbed the rack, and cruised through the thin 10a crack above. He traversed left to a weird chimney slot, clipped a sketchy bolt, did a thin move, clipped an even sketchier bolt, and got himself established below the crux—a 10c finger crack through a roof. With a grunt and a flop, he was over, then ran out the 200-ft rope up a long, slanting, 5.9 layback to a belay.

I followed as quickly as I could, grunting and flopping just the way he had over the roof, and climbing through the endless layback moves to join him. Instead of finishing with the strange 5.7 roof pitch (on the cover of R&I a while back), we decided to do a couple more pitches. I was feeling tired and didn't trust myself to lead a 10 yet, so Matt readily agreed to take over again.

He climbed steadily under the hot sun as I struggled to stay awake. This 10b pitch (Cheap Date) turned out to be quite nice. After a relatively straightforward start, the route traverses right with no pro for about 10 feet, then climbs a long layback crack that arches slightly to the left. The climbing is delicate, not strenuous. The crack eats gear, but all the placements tend to be blind since your body is not aligned with the crack. Near the top, the crack trends toward the vertical again, so you're forced to look for tiny smears for the feet. It was a fine pitch, and after seconding it I suddenly felt eager to lead something again.

Matt gave me the beta on Outlander (10d), a short overhanging crack above us. After some false starts and plenty of gear-placing, I committed to the moves and found them to be not so bad. Almost felt like sport climbing!

Twenty minutes after Matt joined me at the top, we had reached solid ground again. Thoughts of doing any more climbing that day withered and died under the hot afternoon sun before our brains even registered them. We took a nap and then hiked out. All in all, it was a fine day, and we managed to salvage it despite the fiasco on the Petit Grepon. Ah, well, there's always next time.