Petit Grepon

It's time again for another North American Classic Climb!  When the clock strikes five, we had to have our poptarts...and begin hiking.  We, however, were not the first on the trail.  Backcountry skiers woke us up at our renegade camping around 3:30AM with their blaring music.  

Being that the Petit Grepon is a classic means that usually there are loads of people climbing it.  We chose to pursue it in the early season requiring us to bring snow shoes and extra energy, but we were the only ones on the route the entire day.

After six-ish miles we finally arrived at the base of the route.  Yipee!

Darren about to pull an overhanging-ish roof.  We could watch the backcountry skiers flying down the mountain from our vantage point.

Darren took this picture while climbing up the last pitch.  The rock became very narrow at the top.

Summit photo!  Darren barely made it in time.

Relaxing and trying to stay warm.  All I could think about was how cold I was during the last pitch.

Beginning our six or so pitches down from the peak.  Marmot chirps were our soundtrack.

Unfortunately marmots also attacked Darren's shoes that we had left after the first snowy pitch.

Rappelling down the first pitch.  We'd had to use our nut pickers as ice axes on our way up because there was snow almost the entire way.

Darren is way more hard core then Bear Grylls

Glissading down on our six to eight miles back to the car

Loch Lake.  It felt like forever to get around it.

A map showing our hike.  I guess if one wanted to find out our exact mileage, he or she could use the image below to do so.

We picked up some gals that had missed the last bus and took them to their car.  They hadn't seen much wildlife so we did some elk spying on our way down.

On Sunday, Darren and I were so exhausted that we read books and fell asleep in Kind Coffee, and then just drove around the entire Rocky Mountain National Park.  I was stoked because we passed two moose.  I'd never seen them so close before ever.