I’m sure anyone who was hiking around Sky Pond a few Mondays ago would have seen me and my buddy Chris halfway up the Petit Grepon looking like a couple of uberdorks. So if you were out there, yep, that was me up there. The guy in the white tightpants. Actually, Chris didn’t look like an uberdork, but he was guilty by association. Here we are:
The Petit, in contrast to the two of us, is absolutely not uberdorky. It’s one of the classic climbs in North America, according to a book called, “The 50 Classic Climbs of North America.” Imagine that! You’ll have to excuse the terrible photos I’m going to post — I actually don’t own a modern point-n-shoot, so we dug a 7-year-old relic out of the closet.
Anyway, behold! The Petit!
Of the two biggest formations, it’s the one on the left that narrows down to a knifeblade toward the summit. So awesome. We hiked up there at 8 pm the night before so we didn’t have to get up at 3 am, and we slept out beneath the Perseid meteor shower. Check out this defaced photo with the route up the South Face traced in red…
So we woke up at 6 am, ate what should have been called a ‘cherry bomb’ (some sort of cherry custard coffee cake concoction) hiked up to the base, racked up and charged. Mom, you can skip the rest of this paragraph. I got to lead the first pitch, which as you can see went for about 600 feet. We simulclimed to the first belay over pretty easy 5.5 terrain with a few moves of 5.7, which made things go quite fast since we didn’t have to belay each other. Basically we both climbed at the same time on opposite ends of the rope. I still placed gear, but Chris’ bodyweight acted as my belay instead of his hands holding a rope through a belay device. I eventually ran out of gear so I built an anchor and belayed Chris the rest of the way up, where he reracked, and led off. We were both getting worked by the cherry bomb, but no matter. The second bit was sustained 5.8, so we made a real pitch out of it. The last two should have been strung together as a long simulclimbing pitch, but it wandered too much and the rope drag was a pain. But we were still at the top by 8 am. Pretty cool way to start the day.
Observe the uberdork on the way to the summit and on the summit:
What makes the Petit Grepon so rad is its last pitch and its summit. As you climb up that last section, you eventually find yourself on the knifeblade. It’s about 8 feet wide or so. On your right is a not-so-steep 5.7 face that goes 900 feet to the ground. On your left is a vertiginous, overhung valley that’s another 900 feet straight down. Like, if you dropped a pebble off , it wouldn’t hit the wall on the way down. Then you top out onto this little itty bitty summit that’s no bigger than a minivan, and it overlooks a lot of stuff up there. Way cool. You can see us waving at our shadows in the next pic, and then you can see me rapping off. It’s 4? 5? 6? I forgot double-rope raps all the way to the ground. Couldn’t be easier. Up and down by 9 am. Is verrry niicce!
