Sunday, January 29, 2017

January 29, 2016 - It felt soft.

The weekend was humid and the temperature felt soft compared to the last weeks. I didn't even have to wear a jacket.
This of course came with a lot of condensation and thus soaking wet boulders.
I set off anyway today and went to a new sector, Cuvier Sorcières, that has been published recently and features quite a lot of new problems.
It combines a few very small sectors above and next to Cuvier Est to which the sector with "Proueptologue" logically has been added.
Unfortunately all the new problems were either soaking wet or too humid to try.
The only dry enough problem I found, was "Petit Tas Petit", a 7B+ on the same boulder and just right of "Proueptologue".

"Petit Tas Petit" is a very atypical problem on very bad slopers that needed a good swipe of a towel to get them dry enough.
As the temperature felt so soft, I didn't mind waiting for the sun that barely broke through the clouds now and then, drying the slopers some more.

"Petit Tas Petit" is atypical in such a way that I actually had to use my elbow to be able to reach the slopers. There just was no other way to get to them.
As soon as I had figured that move, it didn't take me long to top out the problem, breaking a piece of the rock due to bad foot placement when stepping up.
Luckily, the piece that broke is not used for climbing the problem, but still ... mea culpa!

Very nice problem that is definitely worth the detour, but all in all, it felt soft for the grade.

Fontainebleau - Cuvier Sorcières - Petit Tas Petit 7B+




As everything else in the nearby areas was wet, I drove to Rocher Saint-Germain, only to find "Si t'es Petit, Sois Technique" wet.
I wanted to try the sitstart, but as it wasn't possible, I drove on to Rocher de la Salamandre Est that normally dries quite quickly, hoping that "Chaos Data" would be dry.

Just as I feared, the key holds under the roof of "Chaos Data" were wet and slippery to the point that I didn't even think of trying the moves again and checked bleau.info if there was still something else on the boulder that I could try and didn't require the wet holds.

Strangely enough, I noticed that "Extinguo" wasn't ticked off even though I was quite sure that I had done that already.
It turned out that the version I did had been renamed to "Extinguo (droite)" and "Extinguo" itself had become a different version, excluding one hold on the lip of the roof.
Strange, but at least I still had something left to do and it was dry.

It became a quick ascent that also felt soft for the grade even though it appears that I didn't start low enough in the roof, skipping one move that doesn't add anything to the grade.

Fontainebleau - Rocher de la Salamandre Est - Extinguo 7A




Here's the video from what is now "Extinguo (droite)" from a year ago, with the correct start.

Fontainebleau - Rocher de la Salamandre Est - Extinguo (droite) 7A




Personally, I don't think that there should exist two versions.
Both have the same grade, one uses an extra hold and both felt soft for the grade.

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