December 18, 2016 - Wet.

Pieter sent me a message early this morning, saying that he and and Francis were just on their way to the forest.
We met up around noon on the parking of Le Vaudoué.
It was grey and foggy and everything was wet so we set our hopes on Rocher Fin, one of the quickest drying areas of Bleau.

The long walk turned out to be in vain, because the boulders were just soaking wet.
The more in the open, the wetter the boulders were. The fog was falling down and it just kept on coming.
A couple of small groups of climbers were trying to climb on anything that looked dry, and it wasn't much.
We had a small walk around the area, but headed on to Le 111, a small remote area not far from there.
There also, everything wet except for the start of "Rêve (gauche)", a high arete that requires a lot of power to stop you from "waving the flag".
It was fun working out the beautiful moves but a real pity that we couldn't climb it to the top, just because it was too wet up there.

We noticed that the boulders that were covered by the trees were sometimes almost dry. The branches were covering them from the falling fog.
The decision was quickly made to stop at Rocher du Potala on our long way back to the parking, hoping to find at least something dry there.

We were lucky to find the holds of "Samarkand" dry. Only the high sloper left had to be dried with a towel, which turned out to be good enough.
The small jug on the right was soaking wet, but the hold was good enough to use.

I tried "Samarkand" years ago and was waiting to find it in good conditions ever since.
Ironically, it looked like to be in one of the worst conditions ever, but I was able to finally finish it.
Pieter got really close, but had to give up in the end. He has no excuse.

Fontainebleau - Rocher du Potala - Samarkand 7A+(7A)