January 02, 2019 - Five days too late.

Out of the week and half of holiday I had taken, the past five consecutive ones were wet or soaking wet.
Some friends from Belgium were spending their holidays in area and I had to hear the phrase "We can always do a walk instead." way too many times. But basically, that's all that was possible in the forest those past five days.
Well, there are indeed much more things possible to do in the forest, but it definitely wasn't climbing.

Finally yesterday late in the evening when it was dark, I was able to make out some stars in the sky here and there. Like little sparkles of hope.
It meant that the sky was finally clearing up, because those past five days, it was nothing but grey, dull and dark.
Looking at the weather forecast, the next five days should be quite clear with scattered clouds and no more rain. Five days that came five days too late.
Actually, its four days too late, because as my last day of holiday was today, I was able to profit from the first signs of a drying forest.

When I went for a walk around Apremont yesterday, the boulders were heavily covered with condensation, from top to bottom and under the roofs and overhangs. It was soaking wet.
It was a big and very pleasant surprise to discover that most of the boulders of Apremont Butte aux Dames were in climbable condition.
There where it was very dry, it even stuck. But not for long though.
The conditions were good but didn't last long after being touched. Kind of what I expected, but hey, at least I was able to do something.

I warmed up with "L'Étoile Noire" that I didn't film this time, but was able to also finish the slightly harder direct exit in the left face also and capture that one on video.
A variation that adds a good 'plus' too the original easier exit on the right face.

Fontainebleau - Apremont Butte aux Dames - L'Étoile Noire (direct) 7A+

To show the difference with the right exit, I posted my video from March 2016.
Notice the background with still much more trees back then.
Since last year, they have started to thin out the forest in that part of the forest to bring it back to the state as seen by the famous artists from Barbizon many years ago.

Fontainebleau - Apremont Butte aux Dames - L'Étoile Noire 7A (March 2016)

As the underside of the boulder was still wet, I couldn't try the much harder sitstart of "L'Étoile Noire", but managed to pull off "Ventricule Droit" on the other side of the boulder. Elegance was far gone.

Fontainebleau - Apremont Butte aux Dames - Ventricule Droit 7A+

I spent quite some time in "Débardage" afterwards, but after a while, I had to wait longer and longer in between tries to let the holds dry out, so I decided to move to the 91.1 area close to home. Tony (Fouchereau) has been quite busy there, so there's again some new things to try.
One of them is "Hyperloop" in the back end of the area. A small, but nice little prow that I managed to flash with a bit of luck.

Fontainebleau - 91.1 - Hyperloop 7A(6C+)

Next I wanted to try "La Surfusion", but I started to get tired and the conditions weren't working with me neither.
I had bumped into Markus (Neher) a few minutes earlier and he had told me about the sitstart of number 35 of the red circuit was opened by Tony (Fouchereau) as a 7A.
I turned to that one instead, but had to fight much harder than I had expected. It looks much easier than it turned out to be, or maybe I was getting really tired, but still ... It felt like a good 7A+ to me, at that moment.

Fontainebleau - 91.1 - Plein Ouest (assis) 7A(7A+)