April 20, 2019 - Hide and seek.

Pieter is here again, but as we wanted to avoid the big masses on this infamously crowded Easter weekend, we had to kind of play hide and seek.
We decided to go to the unknown area of La Charbonnière, at only five minutes walking distance from my house in Noisy-sur-École, so when Pieter arrived at my house, we left from there on foot.

I had been to La Charbonnière already quite some times, but only the last time I was able to find the magnificent and impressive boulder of "Shogun". That was already several years ago and couldn't do or dare to do a lot on that boulder so close to home.
Being so impressed by this huge boulder, I didn't dare to back alone to try some of the lines on it.

With Pieter by my side, I was confident, but we both needed a lot of time to build up the trust in the easiest line on that boulder, "Tanuki". Graded 6C+(7A), but opened by David Evrard, so as usaual very tightly and hard graded, but yet again, a great find by him.
"Tanuki" felt very hard for the grade and the climbing and moves are just beautiful from start to end.
Pieter's ascent followed immediately after mine, but having received good beta from me, he did climb it much nicer.

Fontainebleau - La Charbonnière - Tanuki 6C+(7A)

After having built up that confidence, it was time to try "Rönin", of which the landing was even sketchier than for "Tanuki".
Unlike me, Pieter wasn't able to finish this one, but I'm not sure if this was harder than "Tanuki". It did require even more confidence and especially plenty of confidence in a quasi non-existing foothold on which you have to put all the weight on relative height above a bad landing.
Again a beautiful line!

Fontainebleau - La Charbonnière - Rönin 7A

Now that I had done both "Tanuki" and "Rönin", it was time to put some serious effort in the even more beautiful line of "Shogun". This one starts in "Tanuki", traverses to the left with very hard crimps and goes with a big dynamic move to "Rönin" in which it finishes.

After quite some tries, there was only one move left that I could't do, and that was the dynamic move, or the preparation for it. This feels really had, but is definitely something we will go back for.

On our way to the boulder with "Beauty Full", we passed through the ever returning purple flower fields, that grow in masses in that part of the forest. The smell was marvelous.

Beautiful Spring view at La Charbonnière.

At the boulder of "Beauty Full", we both managed to flash the quite easy "Bras Cassés", but weren't able to finish "Beauty Full". We were out of power.

Fontainebleau - La Charbonnière - Bras Cassés 7A

On the way back, it felt strange to realise that it is actually Easter weekend. There are probably thousands of people visiting the forest these days, but we didn't see a single person.

Tomorrow will be hide and seek again and I know another perfect hiding spot.