12X14: How the Fourteeners Explain Colorado

Another mutiny against summer was afoot. Not far above me, the morning’s listless clouds had finally united to form a low, uniform ceiling of grey potential. A dizzy wind chased its tail ever faster as pigeons returned to preferred nooks in the shadowy cliffs all around. I looked down at the boulder-strewn ground hundreds of feet below, up at the turbid sky, and laughed aloud. It was beginning to snow. While this development might not necessarily trouble most people engaged in a summertime activity above timberline in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, the backpacker or peak-bagger perhaps, it would tend to get the attention of those pulling on the handholds of near-vertical, technical rock climbs that were about to become wet. I was doing just that, and I was doing so alone and ropeless. The Petit Grepon is among the most distinctive alpine rock spires in the United States. Reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower when viewed head on, the Petit is tucked neatly out of sight in a high cirque where only those who make a four-mile hike may behold it. Simply gazing upon the seven-hundred-foot pillar from the shores of an opalescent Sky Pond justifies the effort. Though it is a mere toothpick to the hungry, seasoned alpinist, the outrageous spur has style. Its form is echoed by two taller, cruder towers, Shark’s Tooth and the Saber, that stand brooding on either side of it like surly older brothers, ready and eager to pummel anyone who tries to get on top of their lovely sister. I did not normally assign genders to big granite towers, but the curving symmetry of the Petite’s right and left edges vaulting skyward to meet at her airy summit seemed feminine to me. Her beauty was matched only by the ambition of her design. She simply begged to be climbed, this despite, or perhaps owing to, a cause for concern very near her apex. It appeared that her summit block was overdue for a great cannonball into Sky Pond a thousand feet below. The tip-top chunk of the formation, roughly the final fifty feet, looked more balanced in its rarified position than it did attached. Countless centuries had seen it remain in place. I’d only need another hour or so. But the audacious needle was no adversary to be overcome. She was actually much closer to being a friend—she was the one thing holding me up in the air. The only adversary I faced was fear, no match for thorough preparation and teeming joy. I stood on a lunch tray-sized ledge and leaned into the cool granite, splattered here and there with tangerine-colored lichen and white pigeon emissions. I stared down. The rock’s nadir slipped into a field of talus some five hundred feet below. Sky Pond had changed from turquoise to slate gray. I faced the rock and felt its coarse texture through my fingertips, reached high with my left hand for a big, sharp-edged hold, and continued up. I knew that I could summit before the rock became soaked if I stayed calm and moved quickly. I knew I could because after years of alpine climbing, I knew myself. Whether you are haute dogging it up Huron Peak or free soloing a tall tower, it’s about the same thing: readiness is all.