The Petit Grepon

On wednesday July 22, Jeremy and I climbed the Petit Grepon.  The Petit is a classic 8-pitch alpine rock climb that towers above Sky Pond in Rocky Mountain National Park.  I began my day at 2:45am from the Glacier Gorge parking lot.  Jeremy had bivied the night before and I was set to meet him at Sky Pond around 5am.  With my Ipod cranked, I quickly hustled out of the parking lot and onto the trail.  The morning air was cool making for great hiking temperatures.  I traveled at a quick pace reaching the Glacier Gorge/Loch Vale junction in a little over 30 minutes.  By this time my Ipod ran out of battery power so I was left to hike in the early morning silence.  By the time I reached the Lake of Glass, I was about an hour early so I layed down for a quick nap.  After some quick shut-eye I finished the approach and met up with Jeremy at his bivy site right at 5am.  We greeted each other then began our final approach to the base of the climbing.  When we reached the base, Jeremy realized he had forgotten his chalk bag and would have to climb without the use of a hand drying agent.  The first few pitches went quickly reaching the belay just below the 5.8 finger crack a bit after 7am.  Both of us cruised through the crux which awarded us with a large belay ledge and the brilliant last pitches of the upper headwall.  We blazed the last pitches of the route and savored the exposure on pitch 6's "Pizza Pan Belay."  By 9:45am we were both standing of the summit powering up with some slices of pizza and trail mix preparing ourselves for the rappels.  Five rappels later landed us back on the scree field where water and our packs awaited.  Climbing and descent time combined was around 5 1/2 hours as we pulled our ropes from the last rappel around 11:30am.  We then ate a bit more food and I drank my ever present "alpine Redbull" and we proceeded to hike out back to the cars .  We reached the trailhead at about 1:30pm feeling fortunate to have had such a great experience in the mountains once again!