Wanting to escape 90+ degree temperatures in the Front Range, Jeremy and I returned to the Estes Park area on Sunday scouting out a new-to-us place known as “The Crags”. A minor uphill bushwhack through trees brought us to a scree field where we tried to make sense of the array of cliffs and locate Sharksfin.
Our first thought on arriving at the base was that this looked like a miniature version of the Petit Grepon.
While admittedly less classic than the Petit, I’m surprised this isn’t more popular since it’s a quarter of the approach and similar rock quality (abet less traveled). Since Jeremy had done the research to get us here, I offered him the first pitch of the two on the North Face route (5.8). Our plan was to keep doing routes on this block of granite until mid-afternoon or the storms arrived.
Jeremy picked his way up pitch one, avoiding a loose area and clipping one old piton before working out the crux moves. I tried to quickly follow then re-rack and make a few route-finding choices through the easier second pitch.
Jeremy flew up the pitch and joined me at a large cable rappel anchor and we started our descent.
Our 60 meter rope didn’t quite reach the next anchor, but we landed on a small ledge with an old ring piton and pulled the rope. A short belayed traverse got us to another set of anchors. As we were threading the rope I felt a few drops of rain at the far-too-early hour of 11am.
Once back on the ground we took some shelter under and overhanging boulder and decided this wasn’t going to pass quickly. Retreating we started the hike out on wet lichen-covered boulders and made it back to the car just before the rain intensified.
