Lumpy Ridge and the Petite Grepon

I had a great weekend of climbing earlier in May.  My brother, and phenomenal climbing partner, Matthew, was out in the Boulder area, along with our mutual friend Jimmy Costakis.  We headed up to the Estes Park area, with the goal of a casual outing on Lumpy Ridge on Friday afternoon and the Petite Grepon on Saturday.


The 3 of us elected to climb Osiris (5.7) on Lumpy Ridge, but upon arriving at the base of the climb we couldn't resist the adjacent and strikingly aesthetic line, George's Tree (5.9).  It is a gorgeous splitter that beckons the trad climber's name.  The plan was to do the first 2 pitches of George's Tree and then finish with the last 3 pitches of Osiris.  The first pitch was as good as it looked from the ground.  Somehow we made the mistake of continuing straight up for the second pitch instead of traversing left from the belay.  The crack widened substantially after the 1st pitch but it looked like it went at a manageable grade.  Matt led out from the hanging belay, and I knew we were in trouble when the wide crack spit him out; although he managed to catch himself on a good foot.  Eventually he wriggled up the crack and put Jimmy and me on belay.  We were climbing as a party of 3 with just one rope, so I was short-roped to Jimmy about 20ft below him.  Jimmy struggled for quite some time in the obvious crux and eventually had to pull on gear.  Then it was my turn to flail in the crux section.  I fell onto Jimmy's harness a couple of times before pulling through the heinous off-width crux.  At the next belay we consulted the guide book to find we had just climbed the 5.10c off-width variation of George's Tree!  We all had a good laugh about it, especially because Jimmy had never been on a 10c before.  The rest of the climbing was cruiser and enjoyable and we made it back to the car by dark.  That night we met Anthony Riske in town for dinner before heading  into RMNP to camp.

Matt leading the first pitch of George's Tree 5.9

Jimmy Just above the climb's namesake tree

The heinous 5.10c off-width section is just over Matt's right shoulder

The next morning, our group of now 4 awoke predawn to get started on the 5 mile approach to the Petite Grepon.  The 2nd half of the approach still had a lot of snow on it so there was a lot of post-holing involved, making the going quite arduous.  The climbing on the South Face (5.8) was amazing.  It was on good clean rock with interesting movement and incredible views.  It also had massive belay ledges, which always makes the experience more comfortable.  We would have cruised right along, but we got stuck behind a slow party.  I don't consider myself an elite climber or a particularly fast climber, but somehow I always seem to get stuck behind slow parties.  It baffles me how some people are just so dangerously slow in the mountains at times.  Thankfully we were blessed with bluebird weather all day.  We would have been in trouble if some afternoon storms had blow through.  The rap route was a little difficult to follow, but Matthew and Anthony did a great job of finding the stations.  Hiking out was long, but I felt pretty good as I ate well all day and managed to stay hydrated.  Once back at the car, we celebrated with some Deviant Dale's on our tailgates with the "super moon" rising in the east.

Jimmy and Anthony on route (a little hard to see 'em)

Matthew and Anthony with the Summit of the Petite in the Background