Thursday, December 29, 2016

December 29, 2016 - Collegiality.

My colleague and friend, Harco (De Man) stayed over for two days. No work, just climbing.
He arrived yesterday around noon and after a coffee we went to La Ségognole to warm up and make Harco get used to the rock again.
After cruising up every orange problem he tried, it was time for some blues in Cul de Chien.

Stef (Jacobs) and Matthias were climbing in Roche aux Sabots and they gladly joined us to climb in the sun. It was cold.
We ended up spending the rest of the day there, doing mostly red ones.
I was surprised how much confidence Harco had on the sandstone and watched him top out some quite difficult reds. He has it in him and it's great to see him do it with so much motivation.

This morning we arrived early in Cuvier and by 10h we both had done "La Marie-Rose".
Hats off for Harco who did it on his fifth attempt ever, being only his first real time climbing.
The first time was a quick hour after work when he was here for a company project.
The second time was a short afternoon when he was visiting with his girlfriend.
Now was the first time he was here only for climbing.

We moved to "Cortomaltèse" that I repeated on my second attempt again and in which Harco was able to make some good moves. It's one of his projects for next time.
By that time Stef and Matthias had arrived too, and we decided to go to Cuvier Est where we wanted to try the classic "Duroxmanie".
I have been trying this a couple of times now and never found it in really good conditions.
Today the conditions seemed perfect, because while Stef and Matthias were still warming up, I climbed "Duroxmanie" on my first attempt of the day.
It felt great climbing such a beautiful and classic line!

Fontainebleau - Cuvier Est - Duroxmanie 6C




Harco made some really nice attempts, knows what he has to do, but still lacks some technique and he was already getting tired after yesterday's climbing and doing "La Marie-Rose" a second time for taking pictures.
Stef made a lot of progress and is getting very close to a send, but the many tries had started to wear him off.

Back to "La Marie-Rose".
Matthias still wanted to try it, and I convinced Harco to try and repeat it for the video.
They both weren't able to finish it anymore, but got close. The tiredness had gotten the better of them.

In the meantime, Stef and I had started working in "Super Bouze", the conditions were good.
I had done it already in 2011 but completely forgot about how I did it so it was puzzle for bot of us.
It didn't take a very long time before I figured it out again and profited from the good conditions to repeat it.

Fontainebleau - Cuvier - Super Bouze 7A+


Harco still climbed the not so easy bleu 43, "Le Bidule" to the right of "La Marie-Rose".
He's got some mantle skils!

We still had some fun trying to repeat "Big Crotte" but we were all tired and Harco and I decided to call it a day. He still had a five hour drive ahead of him and I really pushed him to the limit.

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