Friday, June 17, 2016

June 17, 2016 - The Coup.

There was a huge rain shower while driving home from work this afternoon, it rained so hard that the cars had put on their fog lights to be seen. Luckily it was short and immediately after the sun came through.
I stopped at Rocher de la Salamandre Est on my way, knowing that the first boulder, close to the road will be in the sun and exposed to the wind.
It was still wet when I arrived, but the sun, wind and my towel did their work. After about ten minutes waiting, it was dry enough to be climbed.
"Métamorpho" is, as the name reveals, very morpho!
Bart Van Raaij is a tall guy and on his video, I saw that he was able to reach the top just barely when keeping his left hand low on the sloper.
This was out of the question for me so I was forced to the small extra move left hand to the crimp about 20 cm higher, and even then it was still only with the tip of my fingers that I could reach the edge on the top.
Don't go too fast after you have the edge, because you can still fall off ...

Fontainebleau - Rocher de la Salamandre Est - Métamorpho 7A+(7A)




Tomorrow they announced bad weather and even after today's rain, the evening promised to be difficult to find some dry boulders nearby.
As I was lucky the last couple of times on the boulder of "Coup de Force", I decided to take my chances again and head for the same boulder. After all, there are still quite some harder problems to do on it.
I did "Conduite Forcée", "Guichot Business" and "Achoppement Libre" very recently so the moves for those problems were still fresh in my head.
As I was in a playful mood, I opened three new variations. Each with the same start as "Coup de Force" and finishing in the above mentioned problems respectively, adding half a grade to each of the original ones.

"Coup de Conduite" starts, as I mentioned, in "Coup de Force", uses the big slopey undercling in the back of the roof to traverse to the right to take the hold in the crack and finishes in "Conduite Forcée".

Fontainebleau - Rocher Guichot - Coup de Conduite 7A FA




"Coup d'Achoppement" starts also in "Coup de Force", same traverse and exit in "Achoppement Libre".
As I did "Achoppement Libre" only a couple of days ago, it was still so fresh in my head and I still had the moves that good in my body, that I was able to do this on my first try. The topout went much smoother than last time!

Fontainebleau - Rocher Guichot - Coup d'Achoppement 7B+ FA




Same start for "Coup de Guichot", with again the same traverse, but finishing in "Guichot Business".

Fontainebleau - Rocher Guichot - Coup de Guichot 7A+ FA




The variations simply add an extension to the originals, but the moves are hard enough to add at least half a grade to them.
Not exactly completely new problems but fun enough to do.

Still three more problems to do on this boulder, "Coup Fourré", "Coup de Faiblesse" and "Coup de Force". Hopefully this year ... that would be nice!!

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