South Face

Gain the Chablis-Pernod notch and ascend the obvious weakness and only possible looking passage up to the bunny-ear notch at the base of the summit's west side. From the notch belay, climb good cracks with great pro trending up and left until in the main weakness of the right facing corner. The left facing corner seams on the right side slam shut, but the left side offers abundant pro that you can only really see well once you're within arms reach. Stay trending up and left changing cracks as you ascend. The upper half of the pitch is splitter thin hands, hands and fingers on amazing rock. Belay below the spire's FA 12 foot AO summit block on finger size pieces, a slung horn, and the first aid bolt. The first bolt is new and bomber, the second is the original quarter incher with old hanger, the bolt sticks out from the wall about an inch but does hold body weight still... repeat ascents may be happy to supplement this short bit with a second new aid bolt and maybe even 2 new summit bolts to rap off of. If the greater community is in support of this, I will return prepared to do this on a other trip. The summit anchor is 2 solid pitons equalized with fresh cord.

2 ropes to rap (a single 70m may work perfectly well, but a single 60m leaves you several meters above the notch), beware rope-eating cracks a few feet below the slung horn at the base of the aid section. It is best to set a  rap anchor as high as possible above the horn (summit or single bolt) to keep ropes out of the cracks and make pulling easier.

The true South Face of Pernod Spire, easily viewed from Chablis' East Face route, which is a very worthwhile means of approach and offers good climbing at moderate grades on good, clean granite. Pernod SF is easily added to an ascent of Chablis' EF for parties competent at the grade. If coming from Chablis, some down scrambling or rappelling on sections of exposed poor rock should be expected. Bring tat to comfort, the only fixed anchors are the raps on Chablis and the summit/aid stations on Pernod.

We descended the south face of Pernod then regained the east face raps on Chablis with a short 4th class scramble. 2 double rope raps from there took us right back to the base of the Chablis east face route.

2x 0.3-2 BD Camalot, 1x set of stoppers, 0.2 BD cam, #3, and #4 Camalot (recommended onsight rack), 10 alpine draws.

2x 60m ropes.