October 20, 2016 - No place like home.

This morning I saw on bleau.info that there were yet again a couple of new 7's published, and "Quintescence" in Canche aux Merciers Anarchodrome was the one that attracted me the most.
After bringing Anthony to his mom for a long weekend, I spent the night in Belgium and still had to drive all the way back.
Canche aux Merciers is not that far from home, so I decided to stop there first on my way.

It was a normal weekday in Belgium and the drive started with traffic jam.
Also around Paris, even though it's a school holiday in our sector, the roads are always crowded. There too I had my fair deal of jams.
I felt tired and stiff from driving, but once I go off the highway in Milly la Forêt, I always open my car windows and get a good nice taste of the fresh air.
It always feels as if the smell of the forest greets me and welcomes me back home.
Smelling and seeing such beauty all around, breathing the clean air filled with oxygen always gives me a boost of energy.
There's no place like home!

Picture from yesterday in Maunoury. If you look closely, you can the village of Larchant in the distance.

It was announced to be dry, but the state of the roads revealed that it had rained a bit anyway.
Most of the boulders in Canche aux Merciers were dry, but in Anarchodrome there is more shade and most of the boulders were quite wet and unclimbable.
The wall of "Quintescence" was dry, not in the best conditions, but possible to climb, but the jug up left was for the most part wet and the topout was very humid to say the least.
For a moment I doubted to give it a try, because on top of that, you have to jump to the left towards the jug, making sure that you will take a big swing, and with the small boulder under it you don't want to slip off uncontrollably.
I decided to try anyway.

It's a hard swing to hold, and as the middle part of the big hold (it's not really a jug) was very wet and slippery, I had to jump even more to the left to grab the part that was dry.
The topout was more than I could see from the ground and I really feared a sudden slip of the hand or the foot while mantling my way up.
I must admit that I was little bit shaky when standing on top and seeing all the wet moss on the downclimb didn't make it any better.
This will probably be more like a hard 7A when the boulder is completely dry and the conditions are good.
I will for sure go back one day to do it again when it's dry. It's a very nice climb!

Fontainebleau - Canche aux Merciers Anarchodrome - Quintescence 7A+