High adventure on Petite Grepon

After hearing about Petite for years, my buddy Shatek and I decided to give it a go. Having mutually exclusive work schedules this summer, he and I have had difficulty finding overlapping times to climb. As it worked out, yesterday was the only day we could lay siege to this inviting feature. On the upside, climbing on a Tuesday would allow us to avoid the masses. On the downside, if something went wrong, we’d probably end up alone out there, relying on ourselves to pull our asses out of the fire. As fate would have it, that is exactly what happened.

The weather forecast wasn’t the most promising. According to NOAA.gov, we had a window of midnight till noon of dry weather. We knew we could probably get up the thing by noon. If we ended up rapping in the rain, no big deal, right? I left my house at 11:45 pm Monday night and picked up Shatek at the witching hour. We were on the trail by 2:15 am. We made it to Sky Pond—or what we thought was Sky Pond--by 4:30 am. We had a full hour before we could enjoy the first vestiges of daylight to help us discern which, of all the spires before us, was the Petite. So, we lounged for a few minutes enjoying the clear sky and quiet pond. About 20 minutes later, another party came up on us. They were three in number, one guy from Aspen and two from New York—aka Aspen Guy and His Charges. Aspen Guy had done the route before and knew exactly how to get there. We had no choice but to let them pass, which we reasoned was probably for the best. We didn’t want to slow them down while we took time to route-find.

Aspen Guy led all of us up past the accept-no-substitute Sky Pond to the base of the climb. We were pleased to see that they racked up quickly and were off the ground in no time. We followed suit. We were also glad to see that Aspen Guy’s charges climbed simultaneously to save time. For three people, they moved quickly.

We really didn’t want to crowd them, but we also wanted to stay ahead of the weather. So, we stayed pretty close behind them most of the way. I figured they probably saved us an hour of route-finding time overall and we probably had a total of 30 minutes wait-time behind them. So, from that aspect, it worked out well that they went first.

As for the climbing itself (and that’s why we were out there, right?), it was fun, but not stellar. You spend almost the first half of the route in a chimney of sorts. When you pull out, you end up on nice exposed, albeit blocky, terrain. The way it worked out, Shatek led pitches 2, 3, 6, and 8. I led the other four pitches. I greatly enjoyed the spectacular position of the last three pitches. The penultimate pitch was probably my favorite. For 5.7, it was almost dead vertical and a bit run out.

The fun started one pitch from the top. Shatek arrived at the belay. I handed him the rack and it started to rain. The clouds had been accumulating and darkening for the previous hour or so. We knew a full-on rainstorm was inevitable. We just hoped we could avoid lightning. In a sprint to the summit, Shatek placed maybe two or three pieces. By the time I was atop this incredible spire, the rain was steady. We were relieved to be on top before the rock became too wet to climb.

After snapping a few photos, we carefully and methodically set up the rappel. Aspen Guy and His Charges were already a couple raps down by the time we got going. A late-coming third party had started up the route, but it was clear that they had retreated due to the threatening conditions. At this point, we were on our own. We were facing six double-rope rappels. No problem. We’ve rapped hundreds of routes without serious incident. We rapped to set of bolts 160 feet from the top. The rap station afforded a place for two people and not much else. This tiny ledge would become our home for the next hour and a half.

For all climbs requiring double-ropes, we use one green and one red--really, they are blue and orange, but close enough. We always tie the knot on the green side of the rap bolts. So, when we pull the ropes, green means go, or in this case, pull. As we proceeded to pull the green side, we instantly realized we might have a problem. The ropes were stuck. We pulled a little more and nothing but resistance. Then we started pulling as hard as we could, still to no avail. We tried pulling from different directions. We were both 100% sure we placed the knot on the green side of the rap anchors. We couldn’t fathom what was hanging things up. I had inspected the rock as I was rapping and I didn’t notice anything that could catch the ropes. It looked fairly clean.

The scary realization hit us that we had two options: wait for a rescue team to deliver us from this craziness or employ some self-rescue techniques. At this point, no one knew we were having problems with the rappel. The other party was now well out of sight and anyone who was in the basin had cleared out. I had visions of shivering on this ledge, a scant 160’ from the top of this spire on an exposed ledge at 12,000 feet. I worried most about my wife and her inevitable panic when I didn’t return that night.

As the rain intensified and the thunderstorms threatened form east and west of us, we discussed these options. We had two Prusik chords. One of us would have the grim task of ascending the rope. Neither of us volunteered, so we settled this impassé with civilization's greatest dispute-settling method: rock, paper, scissors. The task fell to me.

The last time I ascended a rope using Prusik was probably two or three years prior, when I was an assistant instructor for a Colorado Mountain Club class. The time before that was probably when I first learned it in the same class.

The idea of going up during a thunderstorm seemed crazy to me. The thunderstorms seemed to be on either side of us, but not directly on top of us. So, I decided to go ahead and make a run for it—or as much as you can when you’re ascending in this archaic manner. In 45 minutes, I managed about 80 feet. I made it to a little notch below the summit. I noticed a bunch of slings wrapped around a horn. I clipped in with my daisy chain. I reasoned that I might be in a better position to dislodge the rope. I unwrapped the Prusik hitches and pulled the green rope. Holy f’n miracle! It was loose! I yelled down to Shatek to see if he could pull the green rope from where he was. He could. Hell yes! I clipped into the rope with my rappel device and headed back down. We pulled the ropes and continued the series of rap. Luckily, we both had full rain gear. The rain continued. We finally made it to our packs. The epic was over.

We had an anticlimactic five-mile hike back to the car. About half way down, the rain finally abated. We never figured out what it was that hung up our ropes. When we finally reached my car, Shatek said “Did we really just do that?”

[Also, I have a few more photos. Apparently, you can only upload 5 for a given post. I'll upload them to my profile.]