June 21, 2016 - The good choice.

Monday feels like a couple of days ago due to circumstances at work, yet it was only yesterday.
Anyway, yesterday, my oldest son had an orientation run with his class near Mont Simonet, not far from his school.
It seems like a total luxury problem, but the amount of climbing areas is so huge that sometimes I'm stuck thinking about where to go.
With the many showers of drizzle we had today though, the choices were limited, and even more limited knowing that due to the air warming up, the air was humid and caused condensation nearly everywhere. I could feel it on the hot humid air.

It was actually thanks to my son's orientation run having been near Mont Simonet, that the area came into my mind. It has some factors in my favour for the condensation to be less up there. A sandy ground sucking in most of the rain and a high hill catching quite some wind, if any. Especially the boulder with "Pitt Boule" came in mind, knowing it was all the way on top of the hill.

Even while eating it still drizzled a bit, but the small lighter grey spots in the sky gave me hope for dryer weather coming soon.
After diner, the drizzle had stopped in the meantime, and knowing that tomorrow and Thursday I will be away for work, made me get into my car and go for it. I was going to take my chances.

To be short, I can sum it up as follows:

- 15 minutes of driving.
- 7 minutes of walking, and in the meantime 1 second of spotting a deer running away.
- 1 minute of checking the holds of "Pitt Boule" and discovering that they are dry enough.
- 10 minutes of looking for more dry boulders in the area, realising that "Pitt Boule" was the only dry       enough boulder.
- 5 minutes of preparing the pad and camera and putting on my shoes
- 4 minutes of actual climbing and doing "Pitt Boule" on my second attempt.
- 10 minutes of brushing off the holds and the tick marks and packing up.
- 5 minutes of walking (it was downhill this time), 2 seconds of spotting another (or was it the same?)   deer running away.
- 15 minutes of driving back home.

Some people would find it crazy to go through all this just for climbing a soft 7A, but for me it was totally worth it!!! I had made a good choice!

Fontainebleau - Mont Simonet - Pitt Boule 7A