The long Easter weekend is without a doubt the busiest weekend of the year in the forest and this year was of course no exception. Climbers and hikers from all over the continent gather to enjoy the boulders and the beauty of the forest. It's a weekend where I try to be lower than usual under the radar and makes me look for the most isolated boulders in the lesser known areas. Yesterday I chose Rocher aux Voleurs where I wasn't able to top out none of the boulders that I wanted to try and today it was Mare aux Joncs. Both areas are deep in the Coquibus and in both I didn't see another person, no climbers nor hikers, besides my oldest son who drove me there and carried a second crashpad. With my youngest son, I had a bike ride through the forest in Trois Pignons yesterday, and the it was packed everywhere. So that's where everyone was again, which was far from a surprise.
This morning, when I started trying "Coup de Patte", I feared that it would be another day without any successful ascents. I wisely decided quickly to move over to the nearby "Ghost Rider" where I needed quite some time to warm up my fingers and get acquainted with the bad crimp under the overhang. It required a lot of body tension and I also had a hard time getting the method straight. Then suddenly, after some tweaking and changing some minor details, I was able to top it out.
Fontainebleau - Mare aux Joncs - Ghost Rider 7C
Now that I had the moves dialed and stored in my muscle memory, I went for the sitstart and to my great pleasure, topped it out as well. This definitely adds a '+' to the stand in my humble opinion.
Fontainebleau - Mare aux Joncs - Ghost Rider (assis) 7C+
My son had to take the train in Avon late afternoon, so we went to the quick drying Cuvier Rempart on the way there. It's an area where I can seldom be found during the weekend, but it was worth a shot. The boulders were dry, as expected and we walked straight to "Salut Chat", which I topped out rather quick. I couldn't find enough friction to try hard on the harder left exit of "Salut Chien" and I didn't feel comfortable climbing above the small boulder just below it. I will come back some other day to salute the dog.
I had my son drive me to Larchant early afternoon as it seemed like the best chance for dry weather and I figured that "Mégalodon", out in the open spot of the small Mont Blanc Est area, would be dry quickly, especially with the quite hard blowing wind. I think it was my fifth or sixth session on it today, spread over about two years, and when I started trying, I figured it would nit be the last one neither. It was difficult to find the required friction to hold on the very bad slopey high crimp for the left hand and it took a while before I could actually do something with it. Nonetheless, I didn't even come close to doing the next move. I analyzed what I could do better and as I wasn't kidding myself with possibly doing the problem today, I was climbing relaxed and didn't feel any pressure. It seemed to be an undeliberate good approach, because after some time, I suddenly came really close to the top and decided to turn on the camera. Despite feeling very confident all of a sudden, I didn't let the sending stress take over and started with the same attitude. It was a flow and I made it look easy when I topped out. Just in time, at the start of a rain shower.
A lot of rain until late yesterday evening, but also a lot of wind and when I saw that my sandstone terrace started to dry this morning, I took my chances and drove to Barbizon. I had spent a couple of hours trying "Combustion" in Apremont Envers last week, but by the time I had found a good method, I was out of energy and I didn't have much skin left. I went back to "Combustion" this morning with high hopes of doing it, but also with some fear about possibly bad conditions. I was glad to discover that my fear was unnecessary because the boulder was dry and the conditions even felt pretty good, even better than last week. It was a good thing that I had taken two crashpads, because I made a few bad falls when slipping out of the crux move unexpectedly. Nevertheless, I also managed to fall right next to it and somehow lost a big piece of skin off my thumb, with a pretty deep cut in it. It was hard to understand how that could have happened during the fall, because I didn't use my thumb during the climb in such a way to make it loose so much skin and make that cut. I figured that it must have been due to a piece of glass, something that unfortunately can be found way too often in the forest. My thumb felt numb for a while and it wouldn't stop bleeding, but as I was close now, I was eager to continue my attempts. I fixed some tape tightly around my thumb to limit the bleeding as much as possible and was able to top out "Combustion" not very long after. Nowhere too soon, because the tape started to be drenched with blood.
Even though I didn't feel it yesterday evening, this morning I could feel yesterday's effort. With the energy I still had in me today, My son drove me to Coquibus where we had a walk through the small spread-out area of Coquibus Roche Feuilletée. I wanted to see a few boulders and hopefully try the campus (no-foot) problem of "La Ballade des Pendus", a real conventional game that someone once graded as 7B+. It's very wide spread area where the some of the boulders are hard to find and it took us more than an hour to walk over and find the boulder. After a small break, I first did part of the problem with feet to find out where the holds are, had a good look and basically finished it on my second attempt. A long walk just for that, but it was a nice walk with a sense of Spring.
Fontainebleau - Coquibus Roche Feuilletée - La Ballade des Pendus 7B+
There was a lot that I wanted to do at home and with no good weather predicted, I didn't expect much of climbing today. The weather turned out unexpectedly nice though and a lot had dried up by the afternoon. Jan (Gorrebeeck) and Gina are here for three weeks and when proposed to go have a look at "Energie Collective" in 95.2, I agreed to meet him there. Even though it was on my list, I had never taken the time to try it, also because it looked a bit out of my league. I was glad to meet Jan there though and without any expectations at all, we started working out the problem. I was surprised to do the first two moves quickly and continued working the crux separately. The boulder is very morpho though, but when Jan mentioned the possibility of doing a toehook on the right, I was totally up for it as toehooks are kind of my thing. To my big surprise, I was able to work through the crux quite quickly with that toehook and when I then also did the topout with relative ease, I started to believe in an ascent. I didn't want to pressure myself too much, so started trying from the sitstart with my relaxed mindset of just trying from the start and we'll where I can get. Climbing with such mindset definitely helps to take the sending stress away and beyond all expectations, I suddenly climbed all the way to the top. It took me at least half an hour to realize what I had just done and felt sorry for Jan that it wasn't his top day and that he had to leave it behind for the day. I'm sure that when his body wants to follow, that he will get it too.
It was still very early when I started with "La Ruine (assis)" in Les Pentes du Marchais, but I wanted to finish on time to be able to do some work at home. While warming up, I had forgotten how I had done the sitstart into the standing start last time, so I needed to work out some of the moves again. It luckily came back quickly and much sooner than I expected, I was able to top out this beauty.
Fontainebleau - Les Pentes du Marchais - La Ruine (assis) 7B+
Being at walking distance from the other quiet area of La Fontaine Saint-Bernard, I decided to go try "Oubliette", a boulder that I had almost forgotten about because it's so slow drying. After this extensive period of drought, I thought I'ld take my chance. I was delighted to find it dry and finally being able to try it. After rebrushing the problem, I was quickly able to the last part and started giving it some attempts from the start. I only needed a handful to work my way to the top.
Fontainebleau - La Fontaine Saint-Bernard - Oubliette 7B
Walking back to the car, I stopped at another very slow drying problem, "Nights in White Satin". It was a very short stop because despite the sandy rock surface, I flashed it with relative ease.
Fontainebleau - La Fontaine Saint-Bernard - Nights in White Satin 7A+
