The Petit Grepon, RMNP, CO

A few weeks earlier, my friend Matt and I had hiked most of the 4.5 mile approach before discovering neither of us had brought a rope. This trip report was written in my lamest Hemingway imitation...

In the morning while it was still dark Rob drove the car to the mountains. I was tired and I slept. The mountains were there, as always, and we began walking. Rob asked me if I had the rope and I reminded him that I still had it, just like I had it five minutes ago and like I had it five minutes before that. He likes to ask me these things.

The sun also rises in the morning when you're walking in the mountains, and it did that day too. The cliffs were golden in the morning light, and the aspens were half clothed in golden colored leaves. We walked until we reached a lake, then we kept walking until we came to another lake. It was beautiful and peaceful to be there in the mountains in the early morning. The Petit Grepon was there, and it reminded me of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in the springtime, with happy couples holding hands in the park beneath, even though I had never been to Paris.

I tied the rope to my harness and began to climb the mountain. It always feels strange and awkward, when you first start climbing a new mountain. The harness feels heavy with the gear and the air feels thin to breathe. I finished the first pitch on a big ledge, and Rob soon joined me and then he felt the call of nature. There were other people on the ledge, climbers. We waited for them while they climbed a chimney. Then Rob started climbing again and made himself a belay on a large boulder wedged in the chimney. It was a short pitch, and I followed it quickly. The next two pitches were good, but we had to wait for hours while the climbers above us moved slowly like ants. Then I led the crux pitch, which was also enjoyable and took much gear, except for the start, which was a little harder and thin, but I did get a good small blue cam to wedge in the crack.

We waited again for hours on another ledge while the climbers moved like dying sloths up the rock and the storm clouds brewed overhead and we worried. The sun came out again and the climbers finally moved on. Rob led a variation to get head but it was scary and loose and harder and I'm glad I didn't lead it. We reached what the guidebooks call the "Pizza Pan Belay" which is small with a sheer drop-off on three sides but doesn't look at all like a pizza pan. Rob climbed up a beautiful hand crack that was too short and then used up the rest of the rope getting to the top. On the top we enjoyed the view of the mountains and valleys and snow filled gullies. It was four o'clock and we wanted to go down, but we weren't worried because the storms had never come today.

We did two rappels to get to a gully, then we climbed another pitch back up again through a chimney to a notch. At the top of the chimney is a place where you can walk around and look at the tower and see what a steep and narrow rock you've climbed. We changed out of our climbing shoes into our more comfortable walking shoes, and we walked again. There are many boulders on the way down from the mountain, and we saw most of them. It snowed for a few minutes, but then it cleared again and we saw a fat marmot running fast through the meadow in the late summer evening, and Rob said his fat belly was dragging on the ground as he ran. After walking a long way we came to the car again and Rob drove again in the dark while I slept. At home we ate pizza.