Saturday, February 25, 2017

February 25, 2017 - The 600th.

It was a beautiful day today.
The sun was out, there was a blue sky and the air was dry.
It was exactly as forecasted and seen the amount of cars with foreign license plates, there were a lot of climbers who were aware of it. Slowly the big crowd season is starting again.

My body felt tired from yesterday and I wanted to avoid the crowds, so I went to Rocher de la Reine Nord and try whatever I would feel like while wandering around.
My first stop was at the "Diable Rouge" sector between the main area and Rocher de la Petite Reine.
As I kind of expected already, most was wet, but the small roof and the topout of "Allô la Terre" were dry enough.

It would have been special to have a flash send as my 600th video, but that's what I thought after I flashed it without too much trouble.
As it was on my warmup attempt though, I had lost more energy in it than I wanted to and I couldn't repeat it completely anymore. My arms were too pumped after such a heavy warmup.

I did want to have it on video as my 600th one, and decided that if it would have to be special in any way, that would be  a collated one.
The video actually shows "Allô la Terre" in two collated parts. I tried to make it look fancy, but that didn't quite work out.

Fontainebleau - Rocher de la Reine Nord - Allô la Terre 7A+




Feeling not really comfortable with what the outcome of the 600th video would become, I needed a walk to let it go a bit and continued on towards Rocher de la Petite Reine.
It was about 4 years ago when I was there for the first and only time and I couldn't climb because I was recovering from a fractured collar bone, but I remembered that there were some nice problems to go back for one day.
What I forgot however, was how exposed and bad the landings mostly were.

What I did dare to try was "Fortiori", a small 7A dyno into a mantle that I seriously underestimated.
Turned out to be harder than I expected.

Fontainebleau - Rocher de la Petite Reine - Fortiori 7A




Being on the shady North side of the hill for quite a while by now, made me long for some sun and I decided to cross the sunny open spot and walk to Rocher des Mariniers.
A small isolated sector with two boulders 100m apart and only four problems.
Three of those problems are in the seventh grade and can be all be found on the same boulder. The one at barely 100m from the parking of "Les Fusillés".

I had tried "La Cuvette" a couple of times already, but I could never stick the first move long enough to move on.
Now, from my first attempt, I stuck the first move easily, was able to move on and prepare for the next dynamic move, but I jumped off.
I didn't want to make the same mistake as earlier today and preserved my energy for a video send.

Two tries later I stood on top of the boulder, wondering why I was never able to do that first hard move before.
All in all, a short but quite nice problem.

Fontainebleau - Rocher des Mariniers - La Cuvette 7A




It was still a long walk back to my car on the other parking, but it I enjoyed the sun and it gave me time to think about if I would use a collated video or not.
In the end, as you will have noticed, my 600th video is a collated one. It's special.

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