October 28, 2018 - Return of the cold.

After having driven for almost nine hours yesterday, to Belgium and back, I felt stiff and tired this morning. The hour had changed to Winter time during the night, but I was awake and up as usual. Only this time I had to wait longer for the supermarket to open and do some shopping.
To my pleasant surprise, the predicted rain had stayed away and made place for quite hard and freezing wind.
It would have been a great opportunity to go and try a hard project, but I felt too tired to motivate myself to climb anywhere but nearby. On top of that, I was meeting some friends from work who are on holiday for a week and wanted to borrow one of my crashpads for that time.
We were only supposed to meet on the parking of La Croix St Jérôme around 11h30, but I was there well before so I could try "Squeeze Me" again at only 50m from there, before joining them to Rocher des Potêts.

Long before the beautiful, but ethically contested roof of "Haute Trahison" was officially published, Ivan (Moreels) had opened a hard line with the arete and a hard pinch on the other side of the boulder.
He named it "Squeeze Me" and if I remember well, had given it the grade of 7A at that time.
For some reason, this was quickly downgraded to 6C, despite only two registered repetitions, by both tall climbers.
After many sessions, spread over several years and in all kinds of conditions, this morning I finally managed to top out the standing start of "Squeeze Me" and still it had felt hard.
According to me, this should have stayed the well deserved 7A that it was.

Fontainebleau - Rocher des Souris - Squeeze Me 6C

There was still time left for me to try the sitstart, and I remember thinking that it would be a quick job  immediately after doing the stand, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
Unless you have really big hands, that pinch right hand is so hard to hold.
I really can't understand why this is graded only 6C+. It deserves to be a full grade higher in my opinion.
Nevertheless, a very nice underestimated problem with surprisingly few repeaters, being so close to a big and very popular parking.

Fontainebleau - Rocher des Souris - Squeeze Me (assis) 6C+

I was done just in time and joined the friends I was waiting for, to Rocher des Potêts. Most of them are beginning climbers or even first time ever in the forest, so Rocher des Potêts is like an ideal starting area for them.
For me, however, there is not much to do if I want it to be a challenge.
Grade wise, there are only four problems in the '7' range and after today, I can say I have done half of them.

The only problem that I had ever tried there very long ago, was "Snoopy", but it were the bad footholds to start with that prevented me from standing long enough on them for the dynamic and only hard move of the problem.
It doesn't look like it, but it's still quite nice.

Fontainebleau - Rocher des Potêts - Snoopy 7A

It was quite crowded in Rocher des Potêts, so I was glad that the other 7A, "Le Gueulard" was a on the outskirts of the area, and nobody else had found their up to there yet today.
"Le Gueulard" is far from a beauty, but even though it was already done on my third attempt, I really had fun with this one.

Fontainebleau - Rocher des Potêts - Le Gueulard 7A

I briefly touched "La Traversée du Gueulard", but it was too dirty and mossy and I didn't feel like spending time cleaning it. It didn't look attractive enough anyway.

It would have been nice to do the hardest problem of the area, the 7B, "Le Grand Vide", but it is way too morpho for me. At least, that's how I decided it.