January 12, 2025 - Stick to the (right side) story.

As I agreed with Olaf yesterday, we met quite early this morning at Rocher de Bouligny Est. I was pleased and psyched to visit a sector that was new to me. Something that had been a very long time ago. It was still quite early and freezing cold, but unfortunately, grey cloud covered the sky and we even felt some rain drops on our faces while walking towards the boulders. With most of the boulders on the North face of the hill, it turned out that it wasn't the best choice to go there, but I was in good company and I enjoyed the time.
The boulder that spoke to me the most when browsing bleau.info, was the one with "Left Side Story", "Right Side Story" and "Front Side Story". A visually stunning boulder, and one that would keep us busy for some time. As we already expected by the time we got to the boulder, the boulder surely wasn't in the best conditions, but at least it was dry.
I have to admit that I underestimated the difficulty of the problems, or I might as well say that I maybe overestimated the conditions. It was hard to find good friction on the slopers and the session started with a lot of slipping off "Right Side Story" for the both of us. It did get slightly better the more we tried, but it was really cold and we had to take a lot of short breaks to warm up our toes again. Nevertheless, we both made slow, but steady progress changing beta a lot of times during the process. Very strange and unstable body positions on this line that looked easier from the ground than when actually trying it. After some time though, I finally managed to top out from the standing start, knowing that I had to do it again, because the problem starts with a sitstart. Knowing what to do now, I thought that the two easy additional moves from the sitstart wouldn't make a lot of difference and another topout would be a quick deal. I was wrong.
The two additional moves from the sitstart are indeed easy, actually the easiest moves of the whole problem, but sensation of the friction on the slopers was remarkable. It took me at least another half an hour to finally make my way to the top again, this time from the sitstart. I had almost given up on it for the day, so I was really glad to get away with in the end.
Olaf made slightly slower, but still steady progress and came at one move from the end before he needed another longer break and the time came for me to have to leave.

Fontainebleau - Rocher de Bouligny Est - Right Side Story 7A+