Petit Grepon, South Face. The Petit Grepon is a startlingly slender blade of rock located near Sharkstooth in Rocky Mountain National Park. Though it rises little more than 100 feet above the notch which separates it from the mountain mass behind, its concave south face drops some 800 feet to scree slopes above Sky Pond. This southern face was first climbed on June 23 by Arthur Davidson and myself. After a bit of scrambling, we roped up at the base of the lower band of steep slabs. These were climbed by a series of chimneys about a third of the way from the left edge of the face, bringing us in two pitches to a broad, grassy ledge traversing the entire face. We followed this ledge west to its end and started up the southwest ridge above. After three long pitches of increasingly steeper and more difficult rock, we encountered a short overhanging section which appeared unlikely to yield without direct aid. We descended a few feet to reach a three-inch ledge, by means of which we traversed across the entire south face—a distance of fully 30 feet. A moderate pitch on the southeast ridge followed, whence we traversed once more across the south face, now barely 15 feet wide. Above, the two ridges merged to sweep upward as a great sickle-like, overhanging knife edge. A short inside corner provided us an exit onto the east face. A long, strenuous pitch on the left edge of the east face placed us on the crest of the south arête, whence a few feet of easy climbing brought us to the summit.

William J. Buckingham